Vintage Pranks From Those Ads In The Back Of Comic Books

Oh, look. Next week is April Fool’s Day, sometimes known as Stay Off The Internet Day because companies think it’s hilarious to make dumb fake announcements that are sure you clutter your feeds.

But it wasn’t always this way. April Fool’s Day has a history that goes back hundreds of years, but if you were a kid growing up in the mid-to-late 20th century, pranks could be good fun any day of the year. And I know that because comic books ran ads like this full of awesome junk that I wanted so badly:

Joy buzzer! Phony cast! Hot pepper gum! X-Ray Specs! Throw your voice (fool your friends, fun at parties)!

This stuff looked like enormous fun, but I never bought any of them. I did know one person who bought X-Ray Specs and we were disappointed by the illusion. It didn’t let us see through people’s clothing at all.

Somewhere in my online travels, I found someone who did buy these pranks. He bought a lot of them. Je didn’t get them when they were new, but he collects them now as one of his vintage ephemera interests. And then he sells them on his website called, appropriately enough, Old Jokes.

Here’s a sample of the hundreds of old jokes he has:

Stink bombs! A plastic teas biscuit! Joke Scissors! A retracting cigar!

A while back, I got on his mailing list where he sends occasional updates when he acquires new jokes. And every time I get an email, I wonder: Who is this guy? Is he an old-timer who collects these because he remembers playing with them when he was young? Or a younger person who just likes vintage jokes?

It turns out, he is Philip David Treece, a 35 year old professional conservator in Sheffield, England. Last year he did a restoration of grave of Polish war hero Stanisława Paleolog in Manchester. But as a side-project-that’s-turning-into-a-full-time-job, he collects and sells vintage jokes and magic books. In fact, he has a whole other site just dedicated to collectible magic books.

He has an amazing but sadly dormant blog about magic books, and wrote a book called Magic Papers that highlights the beautiful design and illustrations of vintage magic books and magazines.

Magic Papers is out of print, but you can find an excerpt at Design Observer.

With April Fool’s Day right around the corner, I thought I’d reach out to Philip and talk about pranks old and new:

What’s a little-known historical fact about old jokes (or magic books) that makes you think, ‘I can’t believe more people don’t know about this’?

I think for both it would be the scale at which both of these industries once operated. For the peak of the joke industry, companies like Ellisdons were employing many dozens of people. There were probably over five hundred people in this sector alone in the UK and thousands in Germany before WWII. Magic books-wise, it's been said that no other hobby/profession has had a higher number of independent books and magazines produced about it. I'm not sure I believe that, but it is up there. In the 1920s you could subscribe to dozens of different magic magazines at once and there would be new books out every week.

Why are practical jokes interesting to you?

I've always been interested in the history of magic shops and factories, and jokes go hand-in-hand with that. I think when I started collecting magic apparatus and catalogues from the early twentieth century I realised there was a whole world of jokes these same people were dealing in that just get ignored in most magic history books. The stories of who made them are fascinating too, which is why I wrote the books on Ellisdons. So often it was people from marginalised communities who became street hawkers and moved their way up.

What’s your favorite practical joke — either a vintage prop joke like the ones you sell, or a more modern or even elaborate one?

I have a beautiful 1920s German coat hook, sprung loaded so that it holds your coat for just a second and then dumps it on the floor. It springs right back after dumping the coat, so the victim usually thinks it was just them and tries again a few times! For me it's just perfect, causes confusion, but always makes the victim themself laugh once they figure out the prank.

My kids watch a lot of social media videos where people pull pranks that seem, to me, more obnoxious than funny. So what makes a practical joke fun rather than mean?

For me, the above is a perfect example of that. In the end, the person has to find it funny, they enjoy the weirdness and cleverness of the object, there's no cruelty. I think jump-scare-type jokes with exploding devices of electric shocks are just mean.

Are you a practical jokester yourself, or just someone who appreciates these vintage items for history and nostalgia?

I'm not, to be honest. I'm not sure my partner would hang around for long if I made regular use of my collection. I can imagine some of them will be good fun if I have kids though. It's very much the history of such an under-studied area that draws me to them. You can read dozens of books on the history of china dolls or tin cars, but there are just a few on the history of jokes. I'm currently writing one which will cover most of what I know about the British joke industry and the factories around the world which fed it.

There probably aren’t as many famous people known for being practical jokesters as there are famous magicians, but do you have a favorite practical jokester?

That's a tough one. I think most people who have a reputation for being a jokester I'd probably steer clear of. There was a dreadful show on when I was a kid called Beadle's About, hosted by Jeremy Beadle. It had some incredibly cruel jokes on it that were considered family fun in the 1990s. He'd rightly get sued into oblivion if he were doing that today. He was an obsessive collector of books though and had a dream to be the British Ripley.

Is there a particular era in magic or practical jokes that you think was the golden age, not just in terms of popularity, but in sheer creativity? What made it so special?

For both magic and jokes I would say it was the inter-war years. Magic and jokes were both simultaneously a craze around the world and the factories were putting out their best work. It's not widely talked about, or widely known, but many of the finest joke and magic factories were owned by Jewish families in Nuremberg and they were forcibly purchased and the families killed in the late 1930s (though a few managed to flee). Many of the most creative jokes that exist today were produced by firms which closed in such a tragic way. After the Second War there were trade embargos which stopped the surviving German and Japanese factories from exporting into the UK, so that's when the British companies were mostly formed (Ellisdons, BeePee, Novelties Unlimited, etc.) but none of these matched the quality of the German or Japanese firms of the inter-war years. 

April Fool’s Day is coming up. It’s earning a bad reputation as an obnoxious holiday when brands try to be clever or funny online and often fall flat. Do you have any feelings on corporate takes on April Fool’s Day?

It is a shame that it’s become part of the lazy marketers’ calendar, but at least it reminds people that the day exists. I don’t know how big it is across the pond, but it’s still a real thing here, particularly in schools, which is fun.

And that’s it for another newsletter. You have one week until April Fool’s Day to take a long look at yourself in the mirror and decide what kind of person you are. Are you the type of person who does elaborate pranks? Hides at home to avoid other people’s pranks? Do you avoid the internet? Or maybe you’re a corporate marketer at a bakery tasked with coming up with something awful to get some press for your cakes.

Or maybe you’re the type of person who might enjoy some vintage pranks, in which case I know where you can get some.

If you’re in New York, be sure to attend the New York City April Fool’s Day Parade, which is celebrating its 40th anniversary this year!

Thank you to Philip, and thank you as always for reading. See you next time!

David