More Stuff From the Box

Oh boy, more Stuff From the Box! It's like Christmas in April.

Let's start with this impressive pin from the 1939 New York World's Fair. What says "New York" better than Lady Liberty, with a skyline full of impossibly-tall buildings behind her? There's even an airplane, because planes were a big deal in the late '30s. I've seen a few other examples of this pin, except that they are a grayish pot metal... this is the only brass (or gold plated?) one I've seen.

Valued employees of Kentucky Fried Chicken were awarded a pin like the one below. Imagine the pride one felt when wearing Colonel Harlan Sander's golden face on a lapel, highlighted with a single synthetic ruby! Maybe this was for 10 years of service.

The next three items are wonderful cereal premiums, often awarded to kids who were willing to eat box after box of a particular cereal so that they could mail in their box tops. This first item is a Tom Mix glowing "tigereye" ring. See, how it looks like the eye of a tiger? Sort of? And it does really glow too. The ring itself is plastic; it dates from 1949 or 1950, the last year of Tom Mix premiums. I believe that this would have been given out by Ralston Purina. The plastic lens over the slitted pupil looks full of air bubbles on this example, I've seen others that were very clear.

Next up is a cool 1948 prize, a Lone Ranger Flashlight Ring, given out by KIX cereal for 15 cents and some box tops. On one side of the ring is the Statue of Liberty's hand holding her torch, while the other side has the scales of justice.

The original (and very generic) battery was hidden in the wearer's hand; pressing on the metal tab (visible here beneath the bulb) made the light glow. Flash morse code, why don'tcha! Or just annoy people, like I would do.

And finally (for today), another Lone Ranger premium - this time it's the much-loved Atomic Bomb ring, given out in 1947 by, you guessed it, KIX cereal. The brass ring held one of the Ranger's signature silver bullets. But it was more than just classy jewelry - it was actually a spinthariscope. "A what, now?"

From Wikipedia: A spinthariscope is a device for observing individual nuclear disintegrations caused by the interaction of ionizing radiation with a phosphor or scintillator. Remove the red end-cap (which could also hold very small secret messages), and wait until your eyes were well adjusted to the dark, then look through the miniscule lens; radioactive material would cause tiny sparks to appear as the alpha particles struck a zinc sulfide screen . Pretty cool!

The radioactive element was polonium, which had a half-life of about six months, so none of the Atomic Bomb rings work today - though I have seen people selling them on eBay claiming that they still spark; perhaps the seller looked and imagined that they really saw something. Hopeful buyers wind up paying significantly more for a dud, sadly. Still, the Atomic Bomb ring is one of the cooler premium rings ever made.