Friday, May 28, 2010

That's the cover, huh? Yikes.

For six months I've been planning on posting some rather racist covers from old issues of Cracked back when it was a marginally amusing magazine rather than a marginally amusing website. I knew they were laying on my desk, but it was too much trouble to scan or photograph them, so I just left them there. Now with Gary Coleman dying today I figure it's a good time to post these since he's on both covers.

On the first cover, Gary Coleman and Sylvester P. Smythe are boxing. Smythe has a black eye and Coleman has a white eye. Yeah. This was 1982. On the second cover (from 1980), Gary Coleman and Todd Bridges happily smear shoe polish on Sylvester P. Smythe.


I was fairly shocked at these covers when I dug them out of an ancient stack of magazines months ago. I know that these were most likely unintentionally offensive, but I still can't fathom this type of stuff being published on the cover of a national magazine in the early 80's.

[Pointless explanatory notes: The white guy on both covers, Sylvester P. Smythe, was (is?) Cracked's mascot. He's no Alfred E. Neuman. (I didn't link to the Alfred E. Neuman Wikipedia page because you should know who he is. And if you don't, then you should be flung onto a huge anthill.)

Both covers were drawn by the legendary John Severin.]

9 comments:

Helen said...

I didn't know Cracked was originally a magazine. Way to be an obvious rip off of Mad!

Scott said...

What I want to know is why my sister and I liked it so much. It wasn't that funny. I mean it wasn't horribly unfunny, but it was no Mad.

Helen said...

Don't beat yourself up over it. After all, I watched Jem! That's just shameful.

Scott said...

Yes, I too am shamed because of Jem. Curse you, Jem!

Just telling it like it is said...

tap tap where are you?

Scott said...

Where am I? I'm not in Blogtown that's for sure. I'm just not feeling the whole blog thing these days.

Severina said...

So, just how much of the blog thing are you feeling? I didn't realize you had that kind of a relationship.

Heh.

Scott said...

Holy crap! You're alive!

My blog and I have a very special relationship. Or at least, we had one in the past. I think maybe we've grown apart.

Severina said...

Who the hell said I was alive? Don't be spreading rumors.

zombie moan