Jokes & Gags Feature

COLLECTIBLES

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Amuse Your Friends

Just in time for April Fool’s Day, our contributor delivers an essay on vintage gag and prank products. Hot pepper gum and dribble glasses have been around a lot longer than you might think.

By Douglas R. Kelly gift—produced by S.S. Adams in the 1940s and ’50s—was loaded and ready for action. When Joel pulled the pen from its holder, the resulting BANG! scared the you-know-what out of him, and he uttered “[expletive deleted!]” as he dropped paper, pen, and telephone on the hardwood floor.

I would have paid money to see that. By the way, for some reason, Joel didn’t get the job.

CHEAP THRILLS Like my pen, a lot of early gag gifts still work as well as the day they were made, although some naturally are outdated in terms of appearance or functionality. I run across them now and again at flea markets and antique shows, and asking prices are almost always reasonable—I don’t think I’ve ever seen an old practical joke priced higher than $30, and often they’re less than that. The real challenge is identifying a gag or prank in the first place.

The S.S. Adams Shooting Pad and Pen used toy-gunstyle caps (note small red container) and a springloaded mechanism to deliver a mini explosion. When one of these surfaces, it can be had for just $30–$40, including original box.

S.S. Adams debuted its Joy Buzzer in 1928; by 1932 it was a smash hit. This point-of-sale display likely dates to the 1940s or early ’50s.

Kirk Demarais, author of the book Life of the Party, says a gag by itself can be more or less invisible on a dealer’s table without the packaging. “It’s harder when an item is ‘loose,’ unless you’re familiar with it. They tend to look very foreign. It can look like just a handful of oddities.”

Interviewing Demarais about gags made from the 1920s through the 1950s is a real start-and-stop kind of experience, due to constant laughter—on both our parts—and multiple conversational detours.

It seems that, when he was a kid, Demarais’ parents wouldn’t allow him to buy the wonderful treasures he saw advertised in his comic books. Later, when his purchasing decisions were left up to him, he went a little overboard and began collecting squirt rings, whoopee cushions, and plastic tarantulas.

One thing led to another, and his collection became well-known enough that the S.S. Adams Co.’s owners asked him to write a book on the firm’s history as it prepared to celebrate its 100th anniver-

Photo by Kirk Demarais

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enerally speaking, there’s nothing like actually being there, but in this case, hearing the victim tell the story was almost as good. When my friend Joel traveled from Cleveland to visit me in Connecticut, his itinerary included a job interview at a company not far from where I lived. The interview went well, and Joel was hopeful that the company would make an offer.

On the last day of his visit, he was hanging out at my house while I was at work. He had given my number to the people who had interviewed him, and they called to discuss the next steps in the process. As Joel told it, the person on the other end asked him to take down some information, so Joel looked around for paper and something with which to write. I kept a pad and a pen nearby, so naturally he reached for them as he balanced the phone on his shoulder.

Unluckily for Joel, he was reaching for a vintage Adams Shooting Pad and Pen I had on display. The classic prank

Photo by Douglas R. Kelly

Douglas R. Kelly is editor of Marine Technology magazine and a collector of pop culture antiques. He achieved minor notoriety in the Washington, D.C. region through repeated perpetration of the classic Bug in Ice Cube gag.

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ANTIQUES ROADSHOW INSIDER

April 2014

sary. Life of the Party showcases the gags, jokes, and magic tricks produced by the New Jersey manufacturer since its beginnings around 1906.

S.S. Adams, Demarais says, is “an American institution. It all kind of culminated here and is deeply a part of our culture. No question, Americans were all over this stuff in the 1930s and 1940s.”

AFTER ADAMS Adams wasn’t the only player in the world of practical-joke products. Such manufacturers as H. Fishlove & Co., Franco, and countless others in Japan and Hong Kong made gags and pranks before and after World War II. But it’s fair to say that Adams paved the way, essentially creating the industry that still turns out fake mustaches and rubber doggie doo today. Additionally, the quality of Adams’ products generally was superior to those of the competition, particularly before Adams began using plastic to a much greater degree during the 1950s.

Unless you realize that that suspicious-looking can of peanut brittle actually contains a spring-powered snake waiting to give you a coronary, it’s best to stick with jokes and gags that still have the original packaging.

“For the earliest Adams products, you’re going to be looking for things that were packaged on a white card, with black ink—no color or anything like that,” Demarais says. “The item was often literally stapled onto that card, and the card looked like an advertisement—not unlike a printed ad you’d see in a comic book. They used that format starting in the early days, all the way through the late 1940s.

April 2014

Adams’ Shooting Coaster (shown in before and after states) “goes off with a loud bang when glass is lifted.”

“It wasn’t until the 1950s,” Demarais adds, “that their packaging began following the dime-store approach: small bagged items that had a header card with some art, and the item hung beneath that in a bag, and the whole thing hung from a peg.”

The black-and-white carded items often sell for $10–$20 today.

Among the examples: a rubber pencil (“an attractive, hilarious hoax,” per the package) and the squirting quarter (perfect for ambushing unsuspecting friends as you hand them the coin).

Keep in mind that you’ll be competing with magic collectors for some gags and pranks, as certain items have crossover appeal.

AAAHH-CHOO! Is there a “holy grail” of gags out there?

If there is, Kirk Demarais says, “it’s probably the Cachoo Sneezing Powder in the original vials. They’re tiny little glass containers, about the height of a half dollar. They’re rare, and they’re important because they literally were the first Adams product. [The powder] is a byproduct of coal tar, apparently, that made people sneeze. It was hazardous, too, and ended up being banned.

It was potent; they said you could drop it from a balcony and cause an entire room of people to start sneezing.”

And the classic, definitive prank? “I think it’s the Joy Buzzer,” offers Demarais. “It came out in 1928 and caught fire in 1932. It’s really permeated pop culture and has never gone away.”  This 1940s Ink Blot and Bottle from Franco made for a realistic-looking accident scene.

Photos by Douglas R. Kelly

Photo by Kirk Demarais

Here’s the one that started it all.

In 1905, S.S. Adams began selling “Cachoo,” small vials of “sneezing powder,” for a dime apiece.

The FDA eventually banned Cachoo’s principle ingredient, dianisidine, as a toxic substance, but Cachoo put Adams on the map and launched an industry.

AROUND AND ABOUT HIT THE BOOKS

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ans of antique gags are in luck, as two books have been published in recent years covering the category. Mark Newgarden’s Cheap Laffs (2004) is a wide-angle lens look at the practical joke industry, and it includes an excellent history of the various players of the 19th and 20th centuries. Newgarden’s notes on each gag’s “target audience” is by itself worth the price of admission (for the Trick Third Eye: “Bald gentlemen with excessively high foreheads”). Life of the Party, written by Kirk Demarais and published in 2006, is as comprehensive an account of a pop culture icon as you’re likely to see. It offers loads of color photos and plenty of information on the Adams company.

ONLINE HUNTING

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inding 1920s through 1950s gags is very much a hit-and-miss affair at antique shows and flea markets, but as with most things, there are generally a number of items available on eBay at any given time. Search in the Collectibles section, under “Magic.”

And if you’d like to see what Adams offers today, go to ssadams. com. This will take you to the site of Magic Makers, which now owns the Adams line and name. Funny—some of the gags haven’t changed a bit in the past 50 years. “If it ain’t broke….” —D.R.K.

ANTIQUES ROADSHOW INSIDER

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