How did you waste money as a kid?

Comic books. I wanted to send off for stuff on cereal boxes, but Dad said it was ridiculous. I indulged this urge as an adult. My friends laugh, but I love that stuff, especially watches.

Dad was correct. They were a con.

I bought art supplies, craft supplies, and sewing stuff. I was really crafty.

I also bought records.

I called up one of those numbers where you answer questions to win a prize, a month later my parents got a $30 phone bill charge for it and they hit the roof you would have thought I bankrupted us.

Stuff for my bike. It was green and had the high handlebars and banana seat. It was a tiny 22inch thing. So I started souping up bigger bikes.it lasted about 3 years but one old guy actually paid me for a big bike with extended front forks.

Not really wasted money, but I did like buying candy

Male whores.

I was one of those kids with a paper route, and I shoveled snow in the winter and did lawns for old people

They loved the rock salt in the winter but complained about its effects on the lawn.

… and coke

I bought my freedom.

MAD Magazine & Cracked Magazine. Jolly Ranchers.

Pennywhistles and Moon Pies

That's money well spent, r11!

OP, my father also refused to allow me to order sea monkeys despite my incessant begging, but then relented on a set of army men, advertised on the same page of the same comic book as the sea monkeys, but not before warning me that it was a ripoff and that I would be sorry.

Unsurprisingly, he was correct. The promised package of hundreds of army men, tanks, and other wartime accouterments arrived in a stunningly tiny box a few weeks after ordering. The figures were tiny and so flat - almost 2-D, that they wouldn’t stand upright, and the vehicles were smaller than the people.

Worse than my disappointment was having to show my dad the set and trying to hide my profound disappointment.

And I only played with army men because dolls were off limits.

Sea monkeys? My friends had them. Brine shrimp. So when my little brother wanted them, I helped him. I think I even forged a cheque that nobody noticed.

My brother eventually got his sea monkeys and like everyone else became bored

So we made our old sister drink them. She still doesn't know

Comic books and Pentel pens.

If you bought sea monkeys you gave money to a literal Jewish Nazi

OP here. I should have added: I actually wasted money on the Paperboy arcade game at a Hot Spot gas station around the corner.

I saw the little jukebox on the back of my comic book and thought it was a real jukebox, just smaller. My sister told me I was a big dope for ordering it and wasting my money. She was right. After waiting forever for it to come in the mail, I discovered it was a small metal Japanese toy that did absolutely nothing. I guess the X-ray spec didn’t work either.

OP, I love you--I wanted sea monkeys too, and my parents let me get some. Turns out they were just shrimp or something. This was circa 1974. Good times to be had at the back of trashy magazines!

I didn’t have much spending money as a kid but I loved buying records, both LPs and 45s. I wish I still had them.

I also recall having a mini-addiction to school supplies. When I was a kid there were really cool stationery stores. You don’t often see them now.

OP’s pic reminds me I also loved sending away for stuff advertised on cereal boxes or in magazines but like other posters have said, much of it was junk. Still, it was really exciting for me then to get a package on the mail addressed to me. I still remember ordering posters for my bedroom wall through the mail. Sounds kinda weird now.

Of course, in high school I spent my money on nickel bags of grass. (For you youngsters, that’s what we called weed.)

God, I’m ancient.

(Did anyone else send in their drawings to that address inside the matchbooks? You know, “If you can draw this you can be a famous artist…”)

My local aquarium shop sells sea monkeys, though they call them brine shrimp and they’re used as live food for pet fish.

Yeah, records were a huge thing. And posters. I had posters all over the slanted ceilings of my attic room. Most were then current musicians.

My brother called it Greg Brady's Room. I didn't have the beads but I had inflatable furniture. ⁰

Condoms.

I wouldn't say I "wasted" money, but here's what I bought:

1. Music (albums)

2. Cigarettes. Yes, I started smoking at 14 or so.

3. Clothes. Yes, I was into clothes at a young age.

Those "Sea Monkeys" did look intriguing. But they really did look to good to be true. I never bought them.

If you have a few hours, call my dad. He'll be glad to give you an itemized list, by year.

Classic Illustrated comics.

Super-elastic Bubble Plastic

The entire MAD oeuvre

Records

Columbia records and tapes

Wacky Packages! I thought they were the epitome of wit.

In NYC "sea monkeys" are free.

I was afraid to order Sea Monkeys because I could vividly imagine the crowned, humanoid aquatic creatures dying from the air if I accidentally dropped the fishbowl.

I wanted sea monkeys too!! I never got Sea Monkeys but I don’t think that one issue of Betty and Veronica got by me! Marlins were big for a while. OK - Help my aging brain - it is rreeachhhing for something just at the back of my brain - Rarly - mid seventies. It was gum but it had - I think trading cards with popular things but totally wrong instead of Laverne and Shirley it would be Laverne and Squirrely With A cartoon of Penny Marshall and a squirrel. Does that ring a bell at all?

Candy bars, red licorice, twinkies, and $.25 a pop for video games and pinball! I used to be able to buy four candy bars for a dollar! Now they’re like $1.75! What a gyp!

I really wanted the sea monkeys. I really thought they were going to look like the creatures on the box. I needed to see that South Park episode as a kid.

I wasted my money on magazines. Teen, Soap, Hair, and Women magazines,

I was hooked on video game consoles and buying games, or cartridges as they were back then. My brothers and I got an Atari 2600 for Xmas in 1979 as a group present. That was what we all wanted so my parents bought it for the three of us. It came with Combat and as a bonus we got Asteroids as well.

Ever since then I’ve been a gamer and have wasted many hours and $$$ on different consoles and games. I sold the Nintendo Switch I bought during COVID lockdowns recently and am currently game/console free.

R33, I think you're referring to "Wacky Packages" - they were trading cards that were spoofs of other things.

M:TG booster packs.

I loved magazines, like US, People and even TV Guide. Sometimes I’d cut out pictures and paste them in a scrapbook.

I also spent money on stamps because I loved getting autographed pictures in the mail.

Otherwise, it was candy, Combos and cassettes.

I began my lifelong habit of collecting - first stamps, then vintage car and coke ads - the individual magazine pages you flipped through in bins at flea markets. Expanded to NY Worlds Fair post cards and memorabilia - I got a cool highway sign in 8th grade. Now it’s vintage posters from the 2 fairs & 30s - 70s NYC travel. My mom once said “you always bought things to put on walls.”

I saved my quarters for the super-8 video booths with glory holes at the adult bookstore on the main drag in town.

For R40

A great exhibition

Yo-yos. My mom wondered why I needed 36 of them.

Thanks R42 - I’ll check it out next week!

I did not consider buying comic books a waste. I saved money to buy things I wanted that were not wasteful for a kid! Was penny candy a “waste”? The concept of wasteful can’t be applied to children although kids can learn to save and use money effectively. Almost anything a kid buys will be frivolous. But if they learn to save to buy then they are on the right track.

[quote] The concept of wasteful can’t be applied to children

Right. I was about to say 'Slurpees' when I realized it wasn't a waste, it was a social occasion to walk to 7/11.

A waste of money would be something that didn't fulfill its purpose. I asked for a chemistry set for Christmas once and it was an expensive dud. Any trendy toy was usually a disappointment-silly putty, slinky, buying cracker jack for the prize.

I started collecting comic books first. I liked the DC comics because I found its artwork so much neater looking than Marvel's. Andrew Garfield was my first exposure to Marvel when he played Spider Man. From comic books, I moved to books. I didn't think of it as collecting at the time, but I ended up buying all the Hardy Boys books just as they were moving into the blue spine/no jacket series. I'm a fast reader, so I ended up reading most of Nancy Drew (yellow spine) before wanting to read something more grown-up.

Though I bought books throughout my life, I never considered myself a collector, just a reader. Besides putting cookbooks with other cookbooks, I never attempted to organize my books on their shelves. Records were another story. I started with the girl groups and the Beach Boys, then moved to the Beatles and the rest of 1960s popular music.

I grew tired of popular music by the 1980s, and started listening to classical just as CD was becoming the dominant medium. And that's when I really became a collector/started wasting money. If you're a Beatles fan, say, you buy all of their records (or cassettes or CDs, depending on how old you are). And you've got your Beatles collection. With classical, finding favorite pieces or favorite composers is just the first step in what becomes for many an addiction.

Because you can't have just one version of each of Beethoven's symphonies. No, you've got to hear lots of versions, some that are new, some that critics determined were the reference recordings long before you came to recognize the "duh-duh-duh-DAH!" opening of Beethoven's Fifth. And there are all the versions in between. Plus, you want an original instruments version or two in addition to those by Bohm, Bernstein, and HVK.

I got so caught up in this collecting mania, I could probably have saved enough for a down payment on a condo or co-op in a respectable gay neighborhood those days, had I not spent it all on classical CDs. Still, I don't regret spending the time I spent getting to know music. Two or four significant friendships came my way through a common interest in music, either popular or classical.

Who's to say what's a waste of money?

Comic books not bloody "graphic novels" COMIC BOOKS.

R39 what is a "combo"?

R47 I still have a complete set of original Hardy Boys. The brown cloth editions with dust jackets. I still read them. I kept my favorite DC comics from the 50’s and early 60’s. I still read them. I agree about that era Marvel artwork. You either loved Jack Kirby or hated his artwork. I was the latter. In terms of value. My collection is insured for a great deal of money. Plus it’s given me joy for sixty years. No waste of money

Wrestling magazines and junk food.

I traded away probably close to 1.5-2 million dollars worth of Pokemon, Magic, and Yu-Gi-Oh cards throughout my childhood for who knows what. A few bucks, candy, some now worthless nintendo games, etc.

Mad magazine and Cracked. Various comic books - my favorite was Ritchie Rich.

I used to buy Rona Barrett magazines from the supermarket with my allowance money. There was one middle-aged cashier lady who would always give me a funny look like I was buying porn or something.

I bought Mad magazines and sending away for weird little doodads I saw in the Johnson-Smith catalog. That catalog was dope.

r50, my father threw away my entire DC Comics collection, also late '50s/early '60s, sometime during my freshman year in college. There were also some Archie comics. It all filled a trunk. It would kill him if he were still alive to know these comics were worth more than ten or twelve cents each.

You guys grieving over your $1.5 million in comic books. You have to keep those in pristine condition. I'm sure you ate snacks, drank sodas, and flipped through the pages.

Lillian Vernon sale items

Cricket Magazine

Highlights (!)

Lots of paperbacks, new or used...loved MAD and those collections of Peanuts strips, trivia books or the Guinness Book of World Records. I also bought all those practical joke items like whoopie cushions, fake vomit, rubber chicken, etc. Green slime, Silly Putty, Wacky Wallwalkers.

R57. I have reading copies and pristine copies that are stored away.

Bazooka Joe bubble gum, MAD magazines, balsa wood airplanes, prank toys (hand buzzers, etc).

R33 wacky Packages!!! YES - That’s it! Thank you!!

Scholastic Books

Encyclopedia Brown

Alfred Hitchcock’s The Three Investigators

Sports biographies:: Lew Alcindor. Roberto Clemente, Jackie Tobinson, Jim Thorpe …

*Robinson

I never bought sea monkeys because I was scared they’d look like the sea monkeys on the ad and frankly that would be terrifying. What if they just swam around staring at you? What if they crawled out of the bowl at night? They had those little tridents.

No sir, you can keep your sea monkeys.

What I did buy was a WAR set called “TANK TRAP.” It was advertised as having soldiers, and tanks that EXPLODED in fireballs on the scarred battlefield.

I wondered how the explosions were achieved! The ad copy clearly said “EXPLODING — blowing apart right off the PANORAMIC battlefield!” I couldn’t wait — but I’d have to, for 8-12 weeks.

It turned out to be about 15 weeks. In fact I waited so long I had forgotten I had ordered it.

When it finally arrived, the tanks were two little plastic rectangles that barely resembled a tank at all, held together by a tiny rubber band. When you pressed a certain spot on the assembled “tank,” the two parts were supposed to pop apart. It usually didn’t work.

I learned a valuable lesson about people that day. I was nine.

By the way, here are the “tanks” from the set, as you received them:

Magic rocks. Various Magic tricks. Baseball cards (still have them) and Star Wars action figures and playsets. I still have all of them and they are worth quite a bit. Getting ready to sell them all.

Earrings.

Caftans.

Animal figures toys. I had quite a collection of farm animals. I was so obsessed that I even swiped a packet from a toy store and didn't get caught. They stood up and I used to arrange them in groups. Don't have them anymore.

Funsies

R66 what a gyp!

Lots of candy, but candy was not expensive, back then.

Milky Way, $100,000 bar, Nestle’s Crunch, etc.

Columbia House Records.

Not the initial penny you’d tape to the postcard, but the shipping and handling for the required 12 other full-price purchases were the true waste of money.

Like lots of others here, CANDY

As a kid, I can't think that I had money enough to waste. My parents thought everyone in the 1960s was buying drugs, hippies, 10-year-olds... And monitored allowances and special request as if I were asking them to give me one of their limbs. Aside from the occasional soda or snack, I spent money on books (not an easy thing in a small hick town), but whatever I bought was considered a great waste of a very few dollars.

I made up for it when they gave me a credit card for college.

[Quote] Lots of candy, but candy was not expensive, back then… $100,000 bar…

And just how much do you pay for candy now R73?!

I spent hundreds of dollars in quarters trying to get a red weirdo out of those dreaded gum ball machines at the grocery store. I just kept getting green weirdos (like the grass, like the trees, like Frankenstein’s monstah). I gave those to Christina.

Still looking for Spanish sausage...

^ you shoulda tried the porn shop videos…just sayin. That’s my .25 cents.

R74 I used to join Columbia House and RCA multiple times for a penny using different names. By the time I was in high school I had quite a collection.

I had a paper route starting in 8th grade / 90 houses - made 25 - 30 bucks a week and 300 every Christmas. Right from the start my mom made me put half in the bank every week.

Junior years of HS my French teacher organized a trip to France over spring break. I asked my parents if I could go, and my mom replied -“You have money in the bank; if you want to go, go.”

Out of the whole tour bus, I was the only kid who paid for his own trip.

I think it's great you made your own money. However, I think it sucks your parents made you spend your own money on a school trip. Unless of course, your family was poor and spending your own money was the only way you could go.

Oh Mrs. Glickman, R12. You can’t buy anything with a nickel. Have you seen the inflation on penny whistles??

I didn't have a lot of money as a kid and my mother was really frugal with the allowance. What I would get would be: candy - Jolly Rancher stix (Peach, Watermelon, Green Apple, or Grape) or Now N Laters (green apple, watermelon, or banana), Lik-M-Aid Fun Dip, or Lemonheads. Used for overdue library book fees. Sometimes bought cheap Harlequin paperbacks for under $1 at the Rexall drug. The sleazier the cover, the better.