JF Ptak Science Books: Cigarettes as Toy Soldiers: Playing with Tobacco, 1939

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The History of Ideas Blog by John Ptak is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
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Cigarettes as Toy Soldiers: Playing with Tobacco, 1939

JF Ptak Science Books Quick Post

Sometimes a bit that I post in this blog's Unintentional Absurdist category need nothing more than an elementary introduction, their images usually being enough of a story--more of a story--than could be told of them. This current installation, "Pipes and Cigarettes Form a Tabletop Army", from Popular Mechanics for December, 1939, is a good example of this.

The story is simple: for some reason, Mr. Jeff London (of Virginia) and his son Tommy built soldiers and sailors and horses and guns and mess wagons and so on from pipes and cigarettes and matches. They called it "Fags Army". I'm not sure what compels this sort of expedition into creativity, but, well, here it is: