Waaaay back in 2018 (click HERE), I posted one of these vintage Cracker Jacks prize joke books, and then apparently planned to post a few more throughout the same month, --but it looks like the follow-ups never actually happened! AIEEE!! I'm not even sure where those other two tiny joke books pictured in the original post are at this point anymore, but alas, I do have a 4th one, and it's packed with some real comical dandies, as well as a couple of dreadful duds. (Seriously, cat fish and carrots?) Of course, this post, like the other one, is barely even about the jokes, and more about that amazingly fun, cute artwork by some brilliant artist unknown.
6 comments:
This art is so juicy and colorful and fun! And hey, I stand by the writing. What good IS a day without an eve?!
St(eve) agrees!
Love that vibrant cover. The jester touches every side of the frame in a very satisfying composition. Strange that it's halftone screened and nothing else is. Throughout the rest of the book, actual black ink appears here and there, but mostly "black" is created by combining the other print colors. It's an interesting look that seems delightfully haphazard. Maybe it would make some kind of sense if this thing was taken apart and rearranged to see how the pages might align before being cut out of the master sheets. But I'm tempted to imagine the colors weren't planned ahead at all, and that this is the byproduct of whatever paints they threw into the mix any particular day. Maybe no two of these books are exactly the same. But only a nerd like me cares about that stuff.
The pointy vampire in the wind up for the Vampire State Building gag is really wild, like some kind of goth starfish. And I really love both parts of the candy machine joke.
These things are awesome.
The artwork is fun while a few of the jokes are dad jokes, eye roll jokes but fun enough.
I have seen the three carrot gag gift ring and the dime on ring (a dime attached onto a ring) so the silly gag is still with us to this day.
I always think it's a lot harder to do art that reads well on small formats and heavy (or just cheap) print jobs. So extra kudos to the artist doing this, Everything reads well, and while the majority of jokes are groaners (which have their own special love in my heart) it's the illustrations that sell them.
I forgot that we had a bunch of good artist suggestions in the comments of the original joke book post from 2018: Jack Davis, Wally Wood, Jack Rickard... annnd while I'm not sure it's any one of those, I do believe the MAD influence is certainly there!
Thanks for the comments-- I have another fun booklet up next!
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