One of my warmest childhood memories is of hearing the letterbox clank early of a Saturday morning, jumping out of bed, and racing to the front door to try to beat my brother to the prized gifts awaiting us - the weekly comics.

Beano, Dandy, Whizzer And Chips, Cor!, Buster... none of that superhero nonsense for me, just good, wholesome laughs and fun.

I read them for the cartoon strips, but in those days, comics had pages of classified ads targeting gullible kids’ pocket money. One that stands out in my memory was an ad for what were claimed to be ‘X-Ray Specs’.

Looking at them now is a real eye-opener. These yokes claimed to “see bones thru skin”, or even “see thru clothing”. One ad shows a feverishly excited boy who seems to be undressing a woman with his eyes, who may have been his mother... I don’t think the word ‘inappropriate” existed in the 1970s.

I never bought them, and don’t know anyone who ever did. I half-recall an urban legend that some sucker had purchased a pair, waited six months for them to arrive, and then realised they weren’t offering X-ray vision at all, despite the boast that they “guaranteed” it.

Heaven only knows how these wildly false ads could have made it into print for so long - they were different, simpler times.

But I imagine if these specs really had proffered the gift of X-ray vision on millions of boys (I don’t think the ads made it to girls’ comics because, well, they aren’t that stupid) the adults in the room would swiftly have binned them, and then the........

© Evening Echo