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S.S. Adams has been making inexpensive prank and magic gimmicks for 100 years. I’ve bought many a squirting nickel, bottle of disappearing ink, Chinese bottle, and other novelty from Adams’ revolving racks found in toy stores. It’s kind of amazing that in this day and age, it stay in business selling dribble glasses, rubber dollars, salt water taffy “loaded with lots and lots of salt,” snakes that jump out of a can of peanut brittle, and sneezing powder.
I like the packaging even more than the products. The company seems to be stuck in the 1940s, when men wore hats and belonged to secret societies with ridiculous Oriental names, and kids kept wooden slingshots in their back pockets and could play pranks on the neighborhood beat cop without being tasered and sent to a correctional camp.
This book, called Life of the Party, with an introduction by cartoonist Chris Ware, is a terrific visual history of this curious living fossil of a company. You can buy it right from the S.S. Adams website. Link