If you look at the l950s MAD comic books, there are a lot of tiny gags in there that no kid would have gotten. Intelegence is the ability to retain info that one doesn't understand until the key to understand it presents itself. Thus, a gag Spiegelman or I read in MAD in l952 wasn't understood by us until l970. However, we had the ability to retain the ununderstood gags until the key to their meanings came to us as our education and life experiences evolved. To forget something that one doesn't understand represents a form of denial, and doesn't lead to progress of the society or the betterment of the individual's ability to deal with problems. So Wackys often contain esoteric references that the kids didn't understand until 20 or 30 years later, if they were able to retain the original gags in their minds.
If all gags were easily understood, Wackys wouldn't have had the appeal they had to kids then. It is wrong to aim the gags at the lowest common denominator or to try to predict the intelligence level of the reader and talk down to them. Chances are that kids got a few of the esoteric gags, and couldn't believe that a mass market media product seemed to be speaking directly to them. Thus developing a feeling toward Wackies as though they were their intimate friends in trading card form.
OK...so "Lova".... A guy argues with his wife or lover (lova). She erupts and kicks him out of bed (note that he is clad in pajamas). A common problem among the gag writers and execs back then. The easy way out would have been to call it "Liva" soap...a compressed bar of chopped liver .....the pic on the package would show a guy being followed by dogs sniffing at him with hearts floating over their heads as the necessary volcano condescendingly erupts in the background. But no. Who do you think we are? Fleer?
I for one felt that intimacy (heh, thought it was just me!) and always will. It's fantastic to hear it described by one of the creators! I always felt like I was "older than my age" as a kid and was heavily into Mad magazine and Warner Bros/Popeye cartoons from the 30's and 40's, which were aimed at adults rather than children. I loved the intelligent humor and multi-level puns/jokes which were impossible to explain to people who didn't understand. You either got them or you didn't, and often there were cultural tie-ins from the WWII years, etc., that added additional layers of complexity (things like meat rationing and black-out curtains). Still love 'em to this day.
I stuck about 200 Wackys on my bedroom door as a kid an it was a major highlight of my childhood. When I got back into the hobby last year (after a 35 year hiatus) it was amazing how that "feeling" was still there. I've since put together a MUCH larger collection than I ever had as a kid and got two of my childhood friends to relive their love of Wackys in the process.
It's great to hear the background on Lova. Visually it's one of my favorite vintage Wackys: the darkness and volcano reminds me of the "tiki albums" my parents played when I was a kid (my parents served in WWII), and the guy in the pajamas is hilarious! I also always enjoyed when the sides of products had different text than the front ("Awful Size"). Interesting to me that I never noticed it was Lova and not Lava (my brain must have auto-corrected it) until this past year. I think the part that confused me was the word "Soap" attached to "....Run for your life!" -- if I blot out the word "Soap" I see the gag much more clearly.
Love your work, Jay. It's been a lifetime pleasure enjoying this wonderful hobby. Thanks for creating so many of these!
P.S. A gag that I always interpreted as a Warner Bros-ish pun was OS9 Moscow Syrup's "It's Lunchtime in Russia,
SOVIET" -- I always read this in my mind as "so be it", which was
something from an older Warner Bros-ish 30's/40's cartoon. Am I way off here? Could you explain the "It's Lunchtime in Russia,
SOVIET" joke for me? This has been on my list of minor mysteries for 35 years...