This is the world of Stan and Mardi Timm. Perusing their collection of products sold by Johnson Smith and other novelty firms is an experience akin to Pee-Wee Herman’s gleeful romp through Mario’s Magic Shop, trying out squirting mustard bottles and buying trick gum. It takes me back to my family’s lake house where my “I got your nose” grandfather passed down fake dog poop and snake nut cans to my jokester cousins, along with piles of “Archie” comics. Or my kid brother’s obsession with putting on mini magic shows and scaring me with strategically placed glow-in-the-dark plastic insects and lizards.
But the Timms’ vast collection of roughly 1,800 artifacts, focused on items from the Johnson Smith catalogs from the early 20th century and beyond, is more than juvenile pranks—it includes cheap toys and quirky but practical inventions like flashlights, twirling spaghetti forks, and electric tie presses, as well as guides promising to teach valuable skills like detective work or jiu-jitsu.
A 1974 Johnson Smith Company catalog sold black-light posters, boxing puppets, and volcano kits. (Courtesy Stan and Mardi Timm)
“Novelties are so much more than goofy, silly things,” Mardi says. “Everything that comes on to the marketplace starts out as a novelty. They’re things that are not common, things that make you say, ‘Wow, I’ve never seen one of those before!’ or ‘What is that thing?'”
The collection documents U.S. popular culture from the mid-1910s through today, Mardi explains. Exploring the Timms’ catalog, you can identify the problems that plagued Americans over the decades—particularly in the early 20th century, when most Americans lived in more isolated rural communities—and sometimes unintentionally hilarious ways they tried to solve those problems. (Is your bath cold? How about you plug an electric heating device into the wall and then put it in your water?)
“We have the Tark Electric Razor, which is a scary thing for me,” Mardi says. “You put razor blades in it, you plug it in, and the thing vibrates. Now, would you want to put that on your face if you were a man? I don’t think so. But that was a novelty at the time.”
The Tark Electric Razor was first introduced as a new, exciting invention in the 1930s. (Courtesy Stan and Mardi Timm)
The intentional humor is also revealing. While fart jokes transcend time, other wisecracks and gags are specific to their eras. Today, many of us would be unsettled by the racial caricatures, ethnic stereotypes, ableism, cruelty about physical appearance, and overt objectifying of women that you see in early Johnson Smith joke books and pranks.
“Our collection gives us insight into day-to-day, regular folks—what they were interested in and what was funny to them,” Mardi says. “It’s American culture. It’s our history. That’s what’s important about this collection. It’s not just the stuff, but what the stuff represents.”