💊 In 1947, you bought diet pills for your kid. At the drugstore. No prescription.

Before 1962, a drug didn't have to work. It didn't have to be safe. It just had to be sold.

SLIM-ETTS Reducing Wafers. For children. 75¢ a box. Doctor approved, no prescription required.

Card 1 is a full reconstruction of what a 1947 Saturday Evening Post pharmaceutical ad looked like when it was targeting overweight kids. The before/after child illustration. The physician in the white coat. The cheerful "just one wafer at bedtime" copy.

Card 2 is the context: the American Medical Association was endorsing OTC reducing tablets in this era. There was no federal requirement that diet pills be proven effective — that didn't exist until the 1962 Kefauver–Harris Amendment, passed in the wake of the thalidomide disaster. Amphetamine-based slimming products were mainstream, sold at every druggist's counter alongside vitamins.

Card 3 is the wall this ad hits today: DEA Schedule II controls on amphetamines, FDA Pediatric Safety provisions from the 21st Century Cures Act, the FTC Substantiation Doctrine, and the 1962 efficacy requirement — four separate legal systems that would each independently kill this product before it reached the shelf.

The ad is fictional. The history is not.

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