Google gets us a picture. They’re unassembled, cardboard dolls.

http://images.cloud.worthpoint.com/wpimages/images/images1/1/1207/16/1_5e044487e6798b1c92a128f23b543831.jpg

I still don’t get the “joinie” thing, though.

I think it’s because you’re forced to join the limbs together to “build” it.

Also: minstrel mask. Yeah.

Wow… Missed that one ’cause I was looking at the clown.

Yeesh.

I still don’t get the “joinie” thing, though.

I guess you have to “join” them together?

daisy sure did every thing to sell bb guns with those adds. those masks adds one has to wonder what the makers were thinking for not only could kids have a satan mask. but a mistrel one for kids wt. the one for joinies sounds creepy even if they are dolls. given the double andrinda about the word joine’s

I realize that once you get past Mickey, Minnie, Goofy, Donald and Pluto the pickings get pretty slim, but who the hell is Funny Bunny?

Lol in the mask ad it says you can smoke thru it.

The Black and White MIstrel Show ran on TV till the late 1970s. Can’t remember when they stopped doing blackface on it but I’m sure it wasn’t till at least the early 1970s…

That Donald Duck mask looks really creepy. I mean, I regard any rubber mask as basically evil (childhood trauma I’m sure) but that one is especially off…

Yeah, the Donald and Mickey masks look like pure nightmare fuel.

Also, why does the ad mention being able to smoke through them? Aren’t these for children?

Thanks for the plug, Brian! I have some more Disney ads to post in the upcoming weeks!

Didn’t anyone notice that once they are assembled the figures have joints enabling them to move their limbs? Look at Goofy and Pluto especially. You sort of swing them back and forth to “make ‘em dance ‘n’ act for funny for you!” I’ve seen later versions made of plastic.

Geez, that “Half-Wit” mask looks like Alfred E. Newman, but predates him.

Would “jointies” have unfortunate connotations in the late ’40s?

And Dominic’s right. Donald. Looks. Pissed. Like someone’s gonna die pissed.

“Boy! Would I have fun with that idiot’s face”

That might be the funniest line I have ever seen.

It should be noted that the mask ad doesn’t mention kids except in “children and adults alike”, and the people in the group scene are adults.
You people do remember that comics ar enot just for kids, and weren’t it back in the 40s?

Funny Bunny looks like one of the characters in this short cartoon:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0025153/
(and it is actually one of the better-looking silly symphonies, don’t let the name or the topic put you off).

But how did it find its way in 40s ad? No idea. Song of the South, featuring Br’er Rabbit, opened in 1946 though so maybe it’s vaguely connected to that…

Not entirely sure the masks were supposed to be for kids exclusively, since it says you can smoke with them on… unless kids smoking was considered a good thing in 1948?

Don’t forget the Amos & Andy radio show was whites portraying blacks (and a film version was RKO’s biggest hit prior to King Kong), and that was 30s-40s radio… (the 50s TV version actually cast blacks in the role). Interestingly enough, two of the lesser actors in the radio series actually were the voices of B’rer Rabbit & B’rer Bear in Song of the South….

As much as some try to make an issue of the series, it was probably the least bigoted portrayal of blacks in white entertainment media, pre-1960s. But, being the most obvious one, it received the brunt of the attacks.

(Oh, and Song of the South was cliched and stereotypical, but it was a lot more more prejudiced against uneducated poor white trash (who were the villains, both live-action and the archtypes depicted as the bear and the fox) than to the blacks in the story).

We now return you to our originally scheduled program, “Great Moments in the History of White Trash”

Edit: Note that, ironically, it was one of the black actors from the Amos n Andy TV cast that played one of the stereotyped characters in SotS that was based on a redneck white archtype (Br’er Bear) – 5 years BEFORE he was in Amos n Andy. And, he was of Caribbean black descent, not African-American slave descent (though born in NYC), though because of his environment he grew up identifying with the latter. He went on to on make strides in breaking stereotypes, even building his own theater, and hosting Ebony Showcase Presents.