Judge, 1925-12-12 · page 17 of 37
Judge — December 12, 1925 — page 17: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page contains satirical commentary on early 20th-century consumer culture and advertising. **Main Content:** The left section features three humorous cartoons with captions mocking everyday situations: Christmas greeting cards creating waste, a divorce obtained through exchange (satirizing consumer return culture), and a piano mover's pun. **"Unpublished Testimonials" Section:** The right side satirizes advertising testimonials by featuring a deliberately poorly-written complaint letter from "Mizpah Cresus Bulge" to Western Union. The letter intentionally contains grammatical errors, misspellings ("flours" for "flowers," "sivel" for "civil"), and malapropisms, mocking both: 1. **Fake advertising testimonials** – companies routinely published customer praise letters that were obviously fabricated or heavily edited 2. **Actual customer complaints** – revealing the gap between polished ads and real customer experience The satire suggests advertisers had to write their own testimonials because genuine customers wouldn't produce sufficiently eloquent praise. The crude writing style undercuts advertising's aspirational tone while highlighting genuine customer frustration with poor service.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
others into the wastebasket. Pretty soon you find that the table is getting all cluttered up with junk and they are put into a shoe box and taken to the attic. Then pretty soon some- body steps on the shoe box . . . the cards have met their Waterloo be- cause their Blucher has failed them. Then into the furnace, in case a chilly day comes along. This is all waste, waste, waste. My solution is to have the Admin- istration (so-called) pass a law that no firm, or organization doing busi- ness as same, nor any private indi- vidual of whatever race, creed, or condition of previous imbecility, be allowed to print, write, or cause to be written on a greeting card, a. name, a personal message or any- thing that can be construed as a per- sonal message. The stupendous benefit is at once evident: When a person gets a greeting card a few days before Christmas and he has forgotten to send that person a card, he can then send it back promptly and the card thus does double service. Next year the cards can all be used overagainand millionsof people made happy where now they wish greeting cards had never been invented. But has the Administration acted? You know that it hasn’t as well as Ido. Homer Croy Force of Habit Mrs. De Style—Last Christmas he gave himself to Miss Gotrox as a Christmas gift. Miss Gunbusta—Yes. “And then she went to Reno to have him exchanged.” Piano Mover—Yuh thought I'd step on that skin, little rascal? I'll foot yuh. Unpublished Testimonials Or Why the Ad Men Have to Write Their Own Pillsberrey’s Flours by Telegraph eaR Mr. Western Union: I wisht you would instruck your operator in this town to be a little more sivel to your perspecktive customers in this town because last weak I took some roses which we got in our garden down to your office in this town to have them telegraft to our daughter Amy which is studying piano music in Pittsburgh, Pa., where I guess she don’t get many flours but anyways the man you keep in your office in this town nights is no lady because he not only kicked me out of your office in this town bodily but he also throwed the Toses out after me. What I want to know is ain’t my money so good as anybody else’s in this town or else otherwise what good is all your signs in the flour shops about telegrafting flours. I should tell you, Mr. Union, our roses is twicet as good as any you ever seen in the flour store in this town and I think you ought to tell your operator in this town at night be’s too darn fresh. Hoping you are the same, I am, etc., etc. Mizpah Cresus Bulge 15 comicbooks.com