Life — January 17, 1924 — page 12: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "Skippy: He Stages a Show of His Own" This is a comic strip sequence featuring Skippy, a popular early-20th-century children's character. The strip depicts a young boy attempting various schemes to get drugs or medicines—visible signs read "GET IT," "DRUGS," and "HOO-TIM" (likely a patent medicine). The satire targets the era's widespread availability and aggressive marketing of patent medicines and drugs to children. Each panel shows Skippy trying different con tactics (mimicking an adult, begging, performing) to acquire these substances from druggists, ultimately succeeding through persistent antics. The comic mocks both the ease with which children could access unregulated "medicines" and the questionable products themselves—a serious public health concern of that period that Life magazine frequently satirized.