Judge, 1921-10-08 · page 29 of 36
Judge — October 8, 1921 — page 29: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page announces the winner of a caption-writing contest sponsored by Kelly-Springfield Tires in *Judge* magazine. The cartoon depicts a comedic car scene where multiple vehicles have broken down or collided, with figures examining the wreckage. The winning caption, submitted by Claire Newman of Newark, New Jersey, reads: "It's better to have Kelly-Springfields, then you never have the emergency"—a play on the saying "It's better to have friends for an emergency." The contest received 120,000+ entries from worldwide contestants. The judges selected Newman's entry because it was the only caption chosen by all three judges; she won $250. The page emphasizes the global reach of the contest and notes that only four contestants failed to recognize the image as a tire advertisement, underscoring the ad's effectiveness as a marketing vehicle disguised as entertainment.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
KELLY SPRINGFIELD TIRE Prize Contest Announcement FTER weeks of con- sideration of the conversations submitted by the 120,000 or more persons who sent in en- tries to the Kelly-Spring- field Prize Contest adver- tised in the April 9 issue of this magazine, the judges rendered a de- cision in favor of the : : dialogue sent in by Miss ‘ ~ @ Claire Newman of 703 great to have friends for an emergency like this “It's better to have Kelly-Springfields, then you never have the Mt. Prospect Avenue, Newark, N. J. emergency.” —Submitted by Miss Claire Newman but many of them had to be discarded either because they did not quite fit the picture or because they were so similar to captions suggested by two or three hundred other contes- tants that it was impossible to decide which had phrased the idea best. Ose judges had a difficult task. There were a large number of exceedingly clever entries, Every letter submitted was read as it came in and was immediately either laid aside for further consideration or eliminated for one reason or another. When the closing date came the judges had over a thousand entries for final consideration. This number was gradually sifted down to fifteen. Each of the three judges then wrote down his first, second and third choice of the fif- teen. When the lists were compared, it was found that Miss Newman's contribution was the only one which had been chosen by all three judges, and a check for $250 was therefore mailed to her. A contribution from far-off Peru got two votes and so did one from a Pennsylvania farm, but the winning caption was the only one that got all three votes. The entries came in from all over the world—from Canada, Mexico, Cuba, South America, Hawaii, the Philippines, Japan, China, France, England, Alaska, and every State in the Union. * Only four contestants failed to recognize the picture as a Kelly-Springfield advertisement. comicbooks.com