It's actually "Happy and Sunny Mag", having recently absorbed a less-successful sister title, but the cover sets the tone for what's inside - your sevenpence gets you a hundred pages of humorous drawings, jokes and stories, most of them romances. And there are also some fascinating adverts featuring the latest products and services that the buying public of 1933 really need.
"LET ME BE YOUR FATHER" bellows the rather sinister-looking Mr Bennett, who promises to give free fatherly advice and (for a few shillings monthly) instruction in practically everything. If you're not the academic type so much as the kind of person who goes out playing cricket and ruptures himself, then I recommend "Brooks Appliance" - "Write now for our free trial offer sent in plain sealed envelope." Or if you're short (which judging by these adverts a whole lot of people in 1933 were), take a box of Challoner's tablets and become miraculously taller! The sheer quantity of different ads in this issue of Happy Mag for ways and means to increase your height is really quite fascinating.
Once more, Science aids short people, this time with a book rather than tablets. And deaf people are completely cured by The New Patent SOUND DISCS ("Are the same to the ears as glasses are to the eyes"). But I'm sure every reader's eye was drawn to the full-page advert for the new story, "Gay Love", by movie star Douglas Fairbanks Jnr, which apparently chronicles the adventures of Phil and Peter, whose philosophy is "Enjoy life - be gay!" This is the kind of situation where any further comment from me would just be redundant.
Over the page, we have two more tried and tested means of increasing your height - the Stebbing System and the Ross System. Mr Ross seems more convincing, since he's personally increased his own height to six foot three-and-three-quarters.
And just for completeness, the ads on the back cover, although there's nothing too funny about these ones. I'd snigger at the use of the word 'gay', but Douglas Fairbanks Jnr has exhausted my puerile-humour quota for the next couple of weeks. The "Span" Bracer that "supersedes belts & braces" is a wonderful idea, though. I'll have to get one, although it looks like you need to wear your trousers pulled up to your nipples in order for it to be effective.
The actual stories are a mixed bunch - they're mostly very similar in theme, almost all of them chronicling the adventures of working girls who end the story by marrying a rich and handsome man and thus not needing to work for a living any more. Particularly noteworthy are Doris in "A Lesson For The Boss", who takes the blame for a costly error of judgement by a handsome young man, since it doesn't matter if she loses her job, because she won't need a job when they get married, and Tessie in "Not Afraid Of Lions", who gives up her circus lion-taming job at the end of the story when "She's the wife of a country gentleman now, and has no time for such things."
The rest of the stories are all essentially the same kind of thing, except for "William and the Love Test", which is a very good one, and a funny-comic adventure of "Mr Rabbit and his Baby Bunnies":
It's unoriginal even in 1933, but nicely drawn and fun to read, so I thought I should share it here.
Anyway, I'm intending to return to daily bloggery from now on, so thanks for sticking with me.
Watch out for typos or instead of daily bloggery you'll be doing daily buggery.
ReplyDeleteI'm not going to be specific, but I have at least 3 of the ailments these ads claim to remedy; my doctor must really suck, because he can't fix any of them!
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