“Train animals, pets, probably a sibling or two!”

§ November 10th, 2010 § Filed under advertising § 7 Comments

1955 comic book ad


When I was but a young Mikester in the ’70s (the nineteen-seventies, wiseguy) (A.D.), there were a couple of neighborhood kids who had leather bullwhips as toys. Not sure why they had whips as toys, but we all had fun trying to get the end of the whip to crack “like the bang of a shot gun!” as it says in the ad, there. And here we were, in a quiet Southern California city, with really nothing else to do with a bullwhip except try to crack it or, of course, chase each other around trying to hit each other with it. How no one lost an eye is anyone’s guess.

Do kids still get whips as toys now? I mean, aside from kids who’d have regular access to whips anyway, like maybe those who live on farms or whose parents either train lions or provide specialty direct-to-DVD entertainments. I’d suspect bullwhip toys are the kind of thing that’s going the way of the candy cigarettes and the gray plastic spring-loaded cannon I used to have that shot freakin’ wooden bullets.

Anyway, that’s some seductive descriptive text in that ad. “Grip lightly (pressure is on the loop) then crack or coil, ladies.” Okay, silliness aside, whoever wrote this ad sure made it sound like owning a whip would be the greatest thing ever, with just a few choice evocative words, even if ultimately the only thing you did with it was scare the dog or annoy your friends.

7 Responses to ““Train animals, pets, probably a sibling or two!””

  • Roger Green says:

    ah, THAT’S why you’re so well-behaved, despite the warping influence of those funny books you read.

  • Thwacko says:

    When I was a kid (in the 1980’s) I knew a guy who was OBSESSED with Indiana Jones. He had a fedora and a whip, and could make the whip crack so loud your ears would ring.

  • De says:

    For the last Indiana Jones movie, Hasbro released a whip for kids. It was made of cloth and had a sound board in the handle that made the cracking sound. Looked pretty harmless.

  • Mikester says:

    De – Never has having a belief confirmed been so depressing.

  • Pal Cully says:

    My older brothers brought one back from TJ when I was 5. I still have it and my son plays with it. I have insurance.

  • Bully says:

    Long as you’re not actually whipping bulls.

  • Every year at summer camp in Boone, NC, the entire camp would go to HORN OF THE WEST, a play about Daniel Boone. After the show, at least a dozen kids would buy whips in the gift shop. Over the next two or three days, all the branches and small twigs would be stripped off of all the trees around the cabins, and then the counselors would collect all the whips. Year after year after year.