Aunt Lydia’s Baby Gender Prediction Method

I found the following gem in the 1977 J. Gruber’s Hagers-Town, Town and Country Almanack, along with the usually almanac-ery, household tips, and a few grand ads (that I’ll be showing off later). It’s a prediction method for pregnant women to discover the gender of their baby.
In case the name Aunt Lydia sounds [...]

Taking Off Those Kid Gloves About The Collectors Convention

Hey, that conference I’m presenting at, the first annual Bookmark Collectors Virtual Convention, has been written up in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer. Which reminded me that I had not mentioned the event here, pestering you to attend. So, here it is, “Will you please attend the convention?”
I think there’s still some free commemorative bookmarks available, so [...]

Reporting On The Mayan Predicted Demise Of Our Planet

Early in 2010, Greta Sandler smelled the green, envisioning great commercial success in the “green” environmental movement. She cut and pasted digitally merged Shamanistic traditions and historical beauty tips, “recycling” non-attributed native sayings and public domain beauty advice into an ebook, Creating Inner Peace & Outer Beauty While Saving The Earth, published in April of [...]

Whatjamacallit Wednesday: Your Dreams Explained

Straight out of the 1940’s, “Your Dreams Explained.” There’s no copyright, printer, company or artist information on this small vintage booklet; but it smacks of the greeting card slash humor gift variety. In any case, it’s cute ephemera.

Click each image for a much larger scan.

Police Woman: The Long Octopus Arms Twarting Female Police Detectives

Most of us tend to think of Angie Dickinson when we think of police women — and it’s not just because she was Sgt. Suzanne “Pepper” Anderson on Police Woman in 1974.
Most of us tend to think of the 60’s & 70’s when those women’s libbers pushed and sued for the opportunity to be equals [...]

Clarity For Those Wearing Beer Goggles?

They say you can’t find the answers in the bottom of your beer bottle, but maybe you’ll find the answers you seek when you use this retro Magic 8 Ball barware set. Well, technically the five-piece set is marked “Odd Ball,” but you still get the drift, right?

Things I Want In My Hubbard Cupboard

The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest was published by Elbert Hubbard, and so is yet another thing Roycrofter-tian. One of my husband’s obsessions, I am granted free access to and use of all of our duplicate copies, so you should expect to see them here from time to time.
Today I present advertisements for White [...]

Messy Marvin Meets The Messy Witch

What follows are scans of all the pages in a retro Hershey’s promotional comic story book featuring Messy Marvin. This is apparently the top story portion, separated by perforations, from a larger activity book. (This explains the perforation-bumps running along the bottoms of all pages — and some color bleed.)
(I’m tossing this into the [...]