This is the second Canadian tabloid we’ve shared in October, and we have several others upcoming in the next few months. This time we’re back to Minuit, the sister publication of Midnight, published today in 1968 with a cover featuring Susan Boyd. She’s looking a little radioactive, and in unusually dark waters. This could everyone’s fate the way things are going in 2022. We don’t know what Minuit editors were shooting for here. Maybe they had a problem during the printing phase. But in it an odd way it’s actually a nice cover, and Boyd pops up again in the centerfold, looking much healthier.
Elswewhere inside the issue Minuit wastes no time with its efforts to shock. We learn about Vietmanese youngster Bon Ngoc Tho, who editors claim is a demi-homme born with many characteristics of his father—a monkey. We can say a lot about this, but let’s skip most of it and simply note that the 1960s were the tail end, so to speak, of a long-running fascination with supposed human freaks.
Moving on, editors have a curious photo of a model with something unidentifiable in her mouth. We took several guesses what the thing was, and they were all wrong. Turns out it’s a pea shooter—a tire-pois. No, we’d never seen one, but a few of you probably recognized it. Minuit editors claim it can kill a kid, and that hospitals around the U.S. have been treating serious pea shooter injuries, along with wounds inflicted by “blow zappers and Zulu-guns.” The article explains that the injuries come not from shooting the projectiles, but from swallowing them while inhaling to fire the weapon, occasionally piercing arteries in the neck.
There are more stories along those lines, but it isn’t all dark at midnight. Elsewhere in the issue you get men’s fitness, nymphomania, and plenty of celebs, such as Claudia Cardinale, Nai Bonet, and Maureen Arthur, plus Robert Vaughn hawking a 100% legitimate Man from U.N.C.L.E. “plume espion.” That means “spy feather,” which doesn’t help at all in determining exactly what it is. But a careful scan of the text suggests that it’s an x-ray vision device that works on everything from walls to clothes. Right. We’ll take two, and see you at the beach. Twenty-one scans below.
