I was looking through my 1970 Funny Doors set the other day when I noticed something well, funny. Card number 20, "Dopey Book Shop" is festooned with eight book titles, which are being looked over by a puzzled consumer. I realized these titles sounded familiar and sure enough, Topps did something meta here, as almost all are taken from the 1967 release of Dopey Books!
Here's the door in question:
Now my set of Funny Doors is unburst so I didn't want to open the flaps up to see each gag's payoff but I do have an image of an original bit o'artwork (with partial overlay) that shows the reveals for some of them:
I showed that specific piece of artwork when I posted about the set not too long ago but it's come in handy again, so please forgive the repeat look. As you can see, five of the gags are revealed. Let's take a look, shall we? From left-to-right, then top-to-bottom and using the Dopey Book numbering, we also have five that correspond to its gags:
31. What Every Girl Should Know (A Rich Bachelor!)
10. How To Take Care Of Your Teeth (Put 'Em In A Glass)
7. I Lived With Wild Beasts (My Family)
27. How To Put A Lasting Finish On Your Car (Try To Beat A Train To The Crossing)
36. I Hunted For Buffalo (But I Got Lost And Wound Up In Albany)
Another is very close:
32. Your Career In The Movies aka Dopey Books "You Can Have A Job In Movies" (As An Usher)
Two don't match up:
See Europe On $5.00 A Day - I assume this is some kind of French Foreign Legion joke based upon the reveal behind the door.
Hypnotism - Not sure of this payoff based upon the illustration shown above.
Text has been replaced, of course, by an image for each payoff and the artwork is not the same at all given the size restrictions, but the point is made. It was pretty cool of Topps to do something like this.
2 comments:
Did George Woodbridge do some of that art?
Possibly
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