Like many a kid in the 60s, American comics opened me up to a new world of product in the ads; “Tootsie Rolls”, Charles Atlas ads, and best of all, the multi-ad pages of joke toys and novelties. I had no idea how to buy things using post from America, let alone the UK, and my parents were not about to help me. So this was a world I could only look through the window at. Eventually, I had enough cash in hand and was in a sufficient shabby British seaside resort to be able to arm myself with a variety of these exotic items. The whoopee cushion distended the sofa so you couldn’t sneak it under auntie at a party, the x-ray glasses were definitely ineffective, and my dad gave me a bollocking when I successfully pranked him with the black-face soap. I just wasn’t cut out as a Beadle.
I am sure you people have amusing additions to this theme. (For all of us with a trash-aesthetic, the article is excellent, too.)
I was so disappointed by the x-ray glasses. Not at all what I imagined. No seeing through girls’ clothes at all! Just a poxy faint red outline, like on the Ready Brek ads, but not even that good.
I’m thinking of sending them back.
I took my pair apart.
Just a feather to diffract the view.
Chiz chiz.
The Whoopee Cushion gag can be enhanced by filling the bag with gravy
At which point, it turns from a simple fart gag into a severe raging diarrhea gag.
Which of course is much funnier.
Ah yes! Itching powder…did I own a Seebackroscope or just lust after one?
There used to be a joke shop opposite the British Museum, of all place. Turns out it was called Davenports, still going but not there, and they concentrate more on the magic these days…
https://greatwen.com/2013/03/17/secret-london-davenports-magic-shop/
There used to be a joke shop on Market Street in Watford, when I was at just the right age for stink bombs, fake dog turds and similar japes.
As a younger man I shared a house in Tooting, South London, with 3 other similar. All civil servants, clerking in Whitehall. All skint. All daft twats.
There was a joke shop on Tooting Broadway. We were in it one afternoon and purchased a life size rubber arse.
I’ll be frank it wasn’t a lot of use. Later on, a friend, a nice young lass, moved in with us temporarily. While she was lovely her boyfriend wasn’t very. He had a briefcase. Somehow one of us managed to unlock it one morning before he left to go and see a supplier about Something Important.
None of us were there but he did open his briefcase at his meeting to find a life size rubber arse mooning up at him.
There was a definite frisson during his subsequent stays over.
Scientific advancement has improved the rubber arse enormously, and they are now made of lifelike silicone and sell like hot cakes.
So I’m told.
Thank fuck for that.
Itching powder was awful. It really worked! Someone put some down my neck at school and it was insane. Bastard!
Oh God, yes, the Hot Sweets. I bought a packet from our local Joke Shop; looked like simple little fruit jellies, in a little placcy bag and everything, but were laced with Extract Of Scotch Bonnet or something that rated about 140 million on the Scoville scale.
Brought them home, thought I’d try them out on Dad, who had a sweet tooth and would never refuse a mint or a toffee, anything laden with sugar basically. He was out the back, half under the car, when I got home. Bleeding the clutch fluid or something. Bottle of Halfords DOT4 at the ready to top it up. He’d read the warnings on the bottle; ‘toxic’, ‘poison’, ‘call the local A&E’, that sort of thing.
Mum told me where he was, I found him in the car port, half hidden under the Austin and offered him a fruit jelly, all innocent like, from the freshly opened packet. “Thanks!” he muttered, helping himself with grubby fingers to what looked like a strawberry jelly.
About 30 seconds later he emereged screaming from under the vehicle, spitting out shards of red jelly and yelling, “I’ve swallowed some clutch fluid! It’s burning my mouth! The car’s out of action but I need to go to the Casualty, quick, quick, what’ll I do?!!”
I was back in the kitchen, where Mum had a very concerned look about her. I corpsed, showed her the packet as Dad ran towards the door. She turned a strange shade of angry, and yelled to Dad, “He’s given you a joke sweet, the little sod!”, whereupon father yanked the packet of Hot Sweets from my hand and had to try really hard not to belt me about the head. The rest of the packet went down the pan.
Pocket money blown and no ammo left to use on my pals. Disaster.
We used itching powder at school on various classmates as a bit of a larf. One boy reacted really badly to it and got us into trouble (he was OK, just a birrova drama queen generally). As punishment, the three of us were stood in a line in the playground and our evil-nun teacher gave us a liberal dose of the powder down the back of our necks – and we had to stand there for thirty minutes without moving a muscle.
I pretended it was torture for the nun’s benefit but it wasn’t that bad.
Our schoolyard had massive bushes planted around it, full of rose hips that were used generously by one and all in stead of having to buy itching powder…a rose hip smashed against the skin at the back of the neck was par for the course at the rose hip time of year.
Stink Bombs – massive fun, and a great way to get out of school assembly.
Although it was difficult to tell where the niff was coming from – we had a kid at school who was less fragrant than a giant stink bomb
At student balls there was always some fuckwit who thought it would be hilarious to make this or that room uninhabitable.
Lifts are best.
Daily fake turd positioning sets up the opportunity for a real one! What fun!