Did your parents allow you to read Mad Magazine? Not that it would have mattered, I'd have stolen them anyway, but as you might be able to tell, mine did.
Al Jaffee was one of their prominent cartoonists. Still is! Amazingly, only one issue of Mad since 1964 has failed to include an original drawing by Mr. Jaffee. He has been a regular there for 55 years. Al invented the back cover "fold-in" and on his 85th birthday, Stephen Colbert satirized them (and honored Al) by showing a giant fold-in which revealed the phrase "Al, you are old." I hate to say it, but I think subconsciously Al Jaffee had more influence on me than all my teachers and sunday school lessons combined.
This post isn't about Jaffee really, it is about ideas, invention, commerce and the straw. Just like life gives you lemons and you make lemonade, I'm going to make something out of the straw.
Now I do not know when the "sip-top" was invented, nor who owns the patent for it. Jaffe drew this cartoon for a Mad Magazine number 275 which was published in 1983. It ran in a feature entitled "Low Tech Inventions for Everyday Needs" and was intended to be satire. He called it the "Hip No-Drip Sipper." A good gag...People DRINKING IN THEIR CARS!!! HA HA HA! Imagine THAT!
I think Al should have sent his drawing to the Patent Office rather than Mad.
Original Drawing by Al Jaffee, with Acetate Overlay 1983 Collection Jim Linderman
Jim, Thanks for the flashback. I very much remember this and was a huge Jaffee fan. Collecting Mad mags was a big part of my childhood and teenage years. Steve
ReplyDeleteI also loved Mad and especially the Don Martin cartoons. I sometimes see people walking around that look like they came straight from one of his cartoons, and it always makes me smile to myself!
ReplyDeleteComing from a different country, I've never read Mad growing up, however, I'm here in US now, working at University of California, Santa Barbara. One of the Mechanical Engineering undergraduate projects, a few years back, was "the outlet extender" which works exactly as depicted in the cartoon. Their poster also said "pat. pending"... :)
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