"Captain Midnight," sponsored by Ovaltine, with announcer Pierre André hawking the slop and urging kids to send in a dime and the inner seal from a can of Ovaltine, for which one became a member of Captain Midnight's Flight Patrol—later, Captain Midnight's Secret Squadron—and your secret decoder badge. Once or twice a week, Pierre André would give you the code key number, then read off a string of numbers, which you would write down as you lay belly-flopped on the floor in front of the radio. Then, you'd go to some secret place (hide under your bed, perhaps), turn the dial on your decoder badge until the pointer line up with the right key number, and the letters for that particular code would appear in the tiny holes. You'd take the list of numbers and write down the letters next to them. This would give you your week's orders as a member of the Secret Squadron. Oftentimes the orders would by something like "Brush your teeth after every meal" or "Drink your Ovaltine every day" or sometimes it would even give you a hint as to what was going to happen in tomorrow's episode! Heavy stuff!!

Prior to this, Ovaltine sponsored "Little Orphan Annie," complete with her dog, Sandy (I've often wondered it they had one particular actor to say "Arf!" at appropriate times, or if one of the existing cast doubled in the role). Same announcer, Pierre André, and a similar decoder badge. Yup, 10¢ and the inner seal from a can of Ovaltine got you your decoder badge. Same drill, same kinds of messages.

I got my first actual pen and pencil set from "Tom Mix and his Straight Shooters" for a dime and a box top from a box of Ralston breakfast cereal. Mechanical pencil and a genuine fountain pen. They really worked, and I used them all through grade school. I was one of the few kids in the neighborhood who had learned to use a fountain pen, loaded with real ink, without managing to get ink on the ceiling.

In the days before television, they gave you the audio, but you made the pictures in your head. One of the advantages of this was that I secretly knew that behind his mask, the Lone Ranger looked a lot like me.

(Shhh! That's a secret!)

Don Firth