Ads for zip code use appeared in many issues of "LOOK", "Life", and, "Saturday Evening Post" magazines and displayed a caricature of a large snail outfitted as a letter carrier, with the term "Snail Mail" in bold lettering.Īn early use of the exact term is attributed to the author Arnold Lobel in his story titled "The Letter" in the 1970 book Frog and Toad are Friends, in which Frog gave a letter to Snail to be delivered to Toad which took Snail four days to deliver. Post Office in magazine advertising in the mid to late 1960s to encourage use of zip codes. Use of the term "snail mail" pre-dates the 1970 reference below. The Philadelphia North American stated: "The markets will no longer be dependent upon snail paced mails". Similar terminology was used in the 1840s to contrast the already-operating postal mail with the new telegraph. In some countries, services are available to print and deliver emails to those unable to receive email, like people with no computers or internet access. Some online groups also use paper mail through regular gift or craft hot topics. Snail mail penpals are those penpals that communicate with one another through the postal system, rather than on the internet which is becoming the more common medium. Snail mail is also a term used in reference to penpalling. An earlier term of the same type is surface mail, coined retrospectively after the development of airmail. It is also known, more neutrally, as paper mail, postal mail, land mail, or simply mail or post. The phrase refers to the lag-time between dispatch of a letter and its receipt, versus the virtually instantaneous dispatch and delivery of its electronic equivalent, e-mail. Snail mail or smail (from snail + mail) is a dysphemistic retronym-named after the snail with its slow speed-used to refer to letters and missives carried by conventional postal delivery services.