Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2020/12/23/a-sampling-of-unusual-novelties-from-the-1937-johnson-smith-catalog.html
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Devil in a Rosebud sounds like a dope My Life with the Thrill Kill Kult remix.
^^Fun fact, I FINALLY found at least a partial recording and back story about where the samples in the opening of this song is from. It was such a full circle moment.
Oh, and this song about roses…
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I honestly bought X-Ray specs as a kid from a Johnson Smith Catalog back in the late 70s… It was very disappointing.
Still love those catalogs though.
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Didn’t Wendy’s use stuff like this for restaurant table tops?
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They were probably the recipients of the first mail order I ever did as a kid. Hand buzzers and so on… all 99 cents.
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They did, I remember that. Only I think there were more generic old timey ads, not necessarily novelties… but maybe I am misremembering.
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Well, are you going to share with the rest of the class?
I googled and found this. Ironically, from the Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch, who we had a BB post about not too long ago about her death… oh nearly exactly a year ago.
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I was tickled when I was watching Day of the Dead a few years back, and suddenly realized “Holy shit! THIS is where those samples from Confessions of a Knife are from!”
Side note, their show at The Masquerade in Atlanta in about 1990 was one of the most memorable I ever attended.
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“World’s smallest wind instrument”
A bean? A fart joke in 1937 catalog?
Sign me up.
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Finally, a comb specifically for leg hair! I bet that would turn heads every time I used it.
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I saw them 2 years ago when they did a huge long set with I See Good Spirits and I See Bad Spirits, Kooler than Jesus EP, and Confession of a Knife. Almost every single song. It was fantastic.
Well then here, here is part of the record where TONS of samples were taken from.
I did some googling later, and the good news is “Marcy” survived the 60s and 70s ok and is now in Flint, MI.
Bad news is that some of the reporting behind this record (which was from a radio show) and a previous Newsweek article were done with out her knowledge and she ended up suing. 
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Wendy’s used ads for quack remedies and so forth from earlier, c.1900.
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I was always vaguely disappointed that Wendy’s didn’t sell laudanum with those table decos.
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and more random info
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Same here. I thought I would be able to see through walls and read playing cards from the back. Nope. The joke was on me. The benefit of seeing people naked through their clothes was lost on me at that age.
I do still have a mini “monocular” telescope I got from Johnson-Smith, that was surprisingly good quality optics, made in Japan. Hard to believe I still have it since everything else I’ve owned since I was a kid has been lost or tossed.
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I wonder if the spooky skeleton that glows blue in the dark contained radioactive material. When I was a kid I had a plastic toy that glowed bright blue in the dark, probably made in the 1960s. Not long after that manufacturers switched to zinc based phosphors that glow yellow-green.
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Sony disabled an infrared feature on certain camcorders and digicams because of reports that it could ‘see’ through sheer fabrics. Older kids hacked those to restore the function. I have a workaround on my faithful DSC-V1.
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