I don't know if this is just an American pastime, but when I was a kid, the dullness of the days would be immediately brightened when the mail came and I'd find a little package (from Battlecreek, Michigan) with my latest acquisition that I'd get for just a boxtop of cereal or the peel off label of some other food product and a dime.

Two of my favorite prized posessions were an atomic bomb ring and a "look-behind-you" ring. They came up with a million different kind of rings, but these were my two favorites.

The atomic bomb ring had a fat little plastic bomb on it with a removal tail piece. The instructions that came with the ring were that you close yourself into a completely dark closet, then turn on the light and stare directly into the bare lightbulb. After you'd stared into the lightbulb for a minute or two, you would remove the tail piece of the atomic bomb and look into the secret viewing window, and you could ACTUALLY see atoms moving around. Of course, they looked suspiciously like spots in front of your eyes, and if you looked carefully you could see "G E 60 watts" mysteriously spelled by those moving atoms.

The "look-behind-you" ring was invaluable if you were prone to getting beat up on the way home from school. It had very small mirrors on the bevels of the ring, so when you were walking along, you could casually hold your ring up to your eye and if you tilted it just right, craned your neck and got into an extremely vulnerable pose you could see the punk who always beat you up, just before he grabbed you by the back of the neck and started pummeling you. But, hey, what do you expect for a boxtop and a dime?

Any memories out there?

Jerry