Oh, God, these ads. WHAM-O had this aggressive-sounding whip-crack as its signature sound (like an auditory logo), and their products were so strange and obscure that I just had to post some of them on my channel. I don`t remember Instant Fish or most of the others I`ve run across on YouTube. About all I remember are Frisbees, and I am not even sure WHAM-O originated them. But there are instant gardens, cricket condos, wheelie bars that would probably put you in the hospital, air-blaster thingies that do absolutely nothing. . . The products seem incredibly cheap by today`s standards, and the Instant Fish did not fly as a product and may never have even hit the store shelves. I believe it was an attempted followup to sea monkeys, which in spite of the hype and disappointing reality were actually quite the thing in the early '60s.
To quote the info under my video:
WHAM-O had some of the strangest products in toy history. The INSTANT FISH AQUA-RAMA allowed you to raise REAL FISH from a packet of "magic seeds". This reminds me of the scandal over Sea Monkeys, which were in reality just slimy, stinky brine shrimp that promptly died. After a few WHAM-O whip cracks, we see another ad for the WHAM-O "Fun Farm" (in which you can grow pumpkins in a tiny cup!), featuring the most absurd voice-dubbing I've ever heard.
MORE ABOUT INSTANT FISH! On safari in Africa in the 1960s, someone discovered a species of fish that lays eggs in mud, which dried up during the drought season but later hatched after the ground was soaked in rain. WHAM-O immediately came up with a million-dollar idea: they could sell the dehydrated fish eggs and a cheapie plastic aquarium, creating magical, miraculous INSTANT FISH! When WHAM-O pitched the idea at the New York Toy Fair, they sold every Instant Aquarium they had and walked away with millions in pre-orders. However, there was a snag. The fish they intended on using, an African breed of killfish, couldn’t breed fast enough for them to make the idea economically viable, and INSTANT FISH was. . . well. . . dead in the water.
