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Saxton Hale's Thrilling Tales first arrived on newsstands in 1961 as part of a bold Mann Co. initiative to sidestep an increase on postage costs for their weapons catalogs. The first 64-page issue contained four pages of thrilling tales and 60 pages of ads for exciting new Mann Co. products. But Thrilling's editors quickly discovered that showing Mann Co. founder Saxton Hale using a product in the story itself tripled its sales. Ads were cut to 32 pages to accommodate longer, product placement-based stories.

Saxton Hale's Barbershop Action capitalized on the brief "haircut" fad of the early 60s. Its breakaway success would lead to the ancillary titles Saxton Hale's Barbershop Romance and Haircut Horrors Starring Saxton Hale's Ghost. By Issue #40, however, the peacenik movement had gripped America in its filthy, tangled mane, and haircut fiction saw a steep decline. This would be the start of a longtime feud between Hale and hippies, which would culminate in his firebombing Woodstock from a helicopter.

Saxton Hale's Jungle Brawl debuted in the U.S. in 1962, riding a wave of anti-gorilla sentiment following Russia's successful launch of the first monkey, Vladimir Bananas, into space. America's rage was not isolated to communist primates—that same year, monkeynaut Poopy Joe cruelly dashed the U.S.'s hopes of reaching the stars when its shuttle detonated on takeoff. Brawl was notorious for inflaming human-gorilla tensions during its ten-year run, most famously in issue #50, which was printed with gorillas' blood. Its print run of 17 million copies left only five gorillas on the planet.

As the youth movement of the 1960s escalated, manufacturers produced fewer and fewer products for the elderly. By 1963, only four items remained: hats, meat, caskets, and Saxton Hale's Mildly Thrilling Tales. Naked from the forehead down, lying in their coffins gumming Salisbury steak, an entire generation of despondent, forgotten consumers was left with just one thing on which to spend their government checks: Hale's tepid, senior-friendly tales of modest suspense. Saxton Hale Visits His Mother Monthly and Soothing Stories of Familiar Things soon followed. Hale quickly became the wealthiest man in the western hemisphere.

Boy's Adventure with Saxton Hale came under fire from the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency in 1968 for teaching boys aged 6-16, among other things: moral turpitude, arson, vandalism, hippie assault, tax fraud, at-home laryngectomies, car theft, gorilla slaughter, and the Heimlich Maneuver (which had just been invented and was still considered controversial). Pressured by the Senate, Mann Co. changed the name to Girl's Adventure With Saxton Hale, as it was commonly thought at the time that girls couldn't do anything, so any lessons taught to them would be harmless.

Sources and credits for text and images belong to:

http://teamfortress.com/

http://www.michaeloeming.com/

http://tf2wiki.net