The Captain Midnight character began as a radio adventure serial in 1938, a sybdicated program sponsored by Skelly Oil. The show was written as nuch for adults as children, as Skelly Oil had virtually no children's products (only, eventually, a Captain Midnight bicycle tire). The hero was av aviator (Skelly owned the Spartan Aircraft Company and the Spartan School of Aeronautics) and his adventures always had an aviation content. In the Fall of 1940, the program was taken over by Ovaltine, and was made a network program. It became extremely piopular and had literally millions of listeners, including military flight crews. With Ovaltine sponsorship, the title character was recruited to head a paramilitary organization, the Secret Squadron, and all subsequent adventures involved the organization as well as the hero. The radio show ran in serial format through the Spring of 1949; in the Fall, it shifted to half-hour complete story programs, and ended its run iin December of that year. During its radio broadcasts, the program offered a number of radio premiums, including badges, pins, and rings. During the Ovaltine years, the Secret Squadron badges were also decoders, called Code-O-Graphs. (These are offered in many auctions.) In 1940 Dell's comic book, The Funnies, ran adaptations of the radio program adventures. In 1942, Fawcett Publications introduced a Captain Midnight comic book with a hero quite different from the radio version. Rather than being a heroic aviator, he was bedecked in a skin-tight superhero costume and had several special devices at his command, including a ''Doom Beam,''a form of heat ray, anbd a ''Gliderchute'' that enabled him to soar in the air without an airplane. In the comic book,Captain Midnight's civilian identity was a famous inventor, so from time to time, the comic would award ''patents'' to readers who sent in designs for interesting gadgets. (These surface rarely in auctions, but have appeared.) A television program, also sponsored primarily by Ovaltine, began aikring in the Fall of 1952. Radically different from the radio show, Captain Midnight headed a Secret Squadron that was a private organization and had some relatively unrealistic adventures, with the Captain flying his Silver Dart trocket plane across the country for different locales. The TV show had a few premiums -- mostly mugs and a coupkle of plastic Decoder Pins (not Code-O-Graphs); it went off the air in 1956. The TV show premiums appear frequently at auctions. After the TV show went into syndication, the hero's name was changed to Jet Jackson, Flying Commando, and the sound track had the new name spliced in. As far as is known, Jet Jackson collectibles are well after the fact. There have been three replicas made of Captain Midnight radio premiums. One is a 1940 Skelly Oil Medal of Membership in the 1940 Captain Midnight Flight Patrol. Another is a replica of the 1941 Captain Midnight Mystery Dial Code-O-Graph, made of goldtone metal and thicker than the original. This badge has the cipher-key setting windows on the back that the original had. Made in the early 1970s, these are extremely rare. A second, incomplete, replica of the 1941 Mystery Dial Code-O-Graph was manufactured by Klutz, Inc., which sells children's toys. It was apparently manufactured using a photograph of the original as a guide, because it lacks the setting windows on the reverse side. Finally, the Longines Sympjonette Society put together a ''Years To Remenber'' nostalgia kit with eight flexi-disk records of the old radio episodes, and a punch-out photo of a 1942 Code-O-Greaph on cardstock.