| dbo:abstract |
The Johnson Smith Company (Johnson Smith & Co.) was a mail-order company established in 1914 by in Chicago, Illinois, USA that sold novelty and gag gift items such as miniature cameras, invisible ink, x-ray goggles, whoopee cushions, fake vomit, and joy buzzers. The company moved from Chicago to Racine, Wisconsin in 1923, to Detroit in the late 1930s, and from the Detroit area to Bradenton, Florida in 1986. The company would put ads in magazines devoted to children and young adults such as Boys' Life, Popular Mechanics and Science Digest. Their ads appeared on the back cover of many historically significant comic books, including Action Comics #1, June 1938 (first appearance of the character Superman) and Detective Comics #27, May 1939 (first appearance of character Batman). In 1970, humorist Jean Shepherd wrote the introduction for the reprint of The 1929 Johnson Smith & Co. Catalogue, writing The Johnson Smith catalog is a magnificent, smudgy thumbprint of a totally lusty, vibrant, alive, crude post-frontier society, a society that was, and in some ways still remains, an exotic mixture of moralistic piety and violent, primitive humor. In 2014, the company marked its 100th anniversary. On December 31, 2019, the company's website announced that they had ceased operations and closed. Johnson Smith was acquired by Collections Etc in 2020. (en) |
| rdfs:comment |
The Johnson Smith Company (Johnson Smith & Co.) was a mail-order company established in 1914 by in Chicago, Illinois, USA that sold novelty and gag gift items such as miniature cameras, invisible ink, x-ray goggles, whoopee cushions, fake vomit, and joy buzzers. The company moved from Chicago to Racine, Wisconsin in 1923, to Detroit in the late 1930s, and from the Detroit area to Bradenton, Florida in 1986. In 1970, humorist Jean Shepherd wrote the introduction for the reprint of The 1929 Johnson Smith & Co. Catalogue, writing (en) |
