Throwback Thursday: “Wooly Willy!”

“Wooly Willy” is takin’ it waaaaay back.  I remember this children’s toy from my early childhood in the 1970’s.  (I was thrilled to receive this damned thing.  The gimmick, if you can’t tell, is that you used a magnetic pen to draw features on Wooly Willy’s face out of those magnetic filaments encased over it.  To a little boy, that seemed like magic.)  I’m curious if anyone else remembers this guy.

These first hit shelves in 1955, according to Wikipedia, for the princely sum of 29 cents.

I keep wanting to correct the spelling of “Wooly” to “Woolly,” because I’m old and I hate fun, I guess.

 

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“Farm Near Duivendrecht,” Piet Mondrian, 1916

Oil on canvas.

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Cover to “House of Mystery” #200, Michael Kaluta, 1972

DC Comics.

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“When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter.”

Perfection, of a kind, was what he was after,
And the poetry he invented was easy to understand;
He knew human folly like the back of his hand,
And was greatly interested in armies and fleets;
When he laughed, respectable senators burst with laughter,
And when he cried the little children died in the streets.

— W. H. Auden’s “Epitaph on a Tyrant”

 

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Cover to “Batman: Shadow of the Bat” #48, Brian Stelfreeze, 1996

DC Comics.

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To quote the man himself, “SAD!”

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Cover to “House of Mystery” #301, Joe Kubert, 1982

DC Comics.

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“The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.”

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
An evil soul producing holy witness
Is like a villain with a smiling cheek,
A goodly apple rotten at the heart.
O, what a goodly outside falsehood hath!

— from William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice

 

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“Still-Life With a Skull,” Philippe de Champaigne, circa 1671

Oil on panel.

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