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Buster Brown was created by by R.F. Outcault, who also created The Yellow Kid, often cited as the first recurring comic strip character (which he wasn't really, but that's a different blog post). The interesting thing about Buster Brown was that he was very heavily marketed and licensed. While some may think that marketing comic characters is a more recent development, the New York Herald company and later the Hearst newspapers pushed out a ton of licensed products, many of which are featured in this particular strip. Buster Brown is apparently receiving all of his licensed products as Christmas presents, though given his usual antics I don't think he really deserves them. Buster's dog Tige appeared on just as many products as he did, and just three years after the strip's debut the cartoonist is obviously aware of the ridiculous amount of licensing that was going on.

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Here's a device for all of those times that you were wrapping a present and needed an extra finger to put on tape, ribbon, or whatever. I'm horrible at wrapping presents, so this would be quite useful for me. I'd probably need to practice with it a bit, but I could see myself using this every year.

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King Features Syndicate distributed a number of comic strips featuring Disney characters, and some characters that first appeared in those strips went on to become very popular in other media. Most notably of these are Huey, Louie, and Dewey, the three nephews of Donald Duck. They originally appeared in a Donald Duck Sunday comic in 1937. Here we find them singing with other Disney characters who all first appeared in animation. It's unfortunate that their uncle Scrooge doesn't appear here, but not only does he hate Christmas, he had only been created two years prior to this booklet being released.

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It's getting colder, and there probably are some pretty icy pavements and sidewalks that one might come across this time of year. At first glance this device looks pretty useful, but I think you'd need a much bigger and stronger dog to carry the whole thing around. Also, from that illustration, it doesn't look like you would quite land on the pillow. It would probably need some tweaking before I would use it.

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In 1949, King Features Syndicate released a booklet called "Sing With King at Christmas," which included several Christmas carols and showed various King Features comic strip characters singing them. Today's selection features Prince Valiant, the incredible long-running adventure comic strip created by the great illustrator Hal Foster. Prince Valiant, which started in 1937, still runs in newspapers today. The titular Prince lives in the days of King Arthur and does the kind of things you'd imagine a medieval knight would do, apparently including serenading fair maidens. Of course, this song doesn't quite date back to medieval times, so I imagine that picture actually depicts him singing something else.

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This is not one of Rube Goldberg's famous devices, but it is useful nonetheless. These days, when most Christmas shopping is done online, this type of outfit and shopping preparation may not be necessary, but you never know. Also, this may have been more useful for Black Friday, but going Christmas shopping anytime in December can still sometimes be quite harrowing.

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The Peter Rabbit most people know was created by Beatrix Potter in 1902, and was featured in a number of wonderful children's books by her. The Peter Rabbit in this comic strip, however, was created by Thornton Burgess in 1910 and is better known as Petter Cottontail. The comic strip ran from 1920 to 1948 and was written and illustrated by Harrison Cady. Cady also illustrated all of Burgess' children's stories. The two characters bear many remarkable similarities, though the main difference is that Potter's Peter Rabbit lives in England while the Burgess version clearly lives in the United States. The giveaway there is Jimmy Possum, who speaks in an unfortunate dialect and steals all of their Christmas goodies. Despite that, the comic strip is adorable and enjoyable to read. Hopefully next time Peter will keep a better watch on his goodie basket.

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I've of course written about Rube Goldberg before, and all of his comic strip inventions are incredibly fun to look at and read. Fortunately, he also did a few dealing with Christmas. This one should be quite useful for this time of year, if you still haven't decided on what to get your significant other yet. Also, I'm sure the target for the blindfolded archer can be switched out depending on who you are deciding for. I would hope not everyone on your list would want perfume, hankies, jewelry, and furs. After all, I'm sure the blindfolded archer is going to expect a present, too, and I don't imagine he's into those things.

The other beautiful thing about this device is that if your savings (A) are not heavy enough to lift the hat (C), then the decision has already been made.

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The Katzenjammer Kids is the longest running newspaper comic strip, and still runs in a few newspapers in the United States and several other countries. It started in 1897, and has a very interesting history that I may blog about at a later time. The strip involves two kids, Hanz and Fritz, who are generally mischievous, their mother Mama, and The Captain, whose relationship to Mama and the kids has never really been made clear. All of them speak in some kind of strange pseudo-German dialect, which I find kind of fun, and which I hope isn't offensive to anyone of a German persuasion. I don't find the Asian sailor in The Captain's crew to be quite as fun, but he only gets one line in this strip, so I can ignore it.

Since it's December, I felt the need to take some time and share some comic strips related to Christmas, because I like Christmas and I like comic strips. I also felt the need to share some comic strips that most people may not be familiar with. They were well-known in their time, but it seems that these days the only comic strip that most people know is Peanuts (which they often mistakenly call "Charlie Brown"). So, to start off, here's a Christmas comic strip featuring several comic strip characters of yesteryear:

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This is a Mutt and Jeff strip from 1913, drawn by Bud Fisher. You can see Mutt standing in the center giving the toast, with Jeff sitting to the left of him. Going counter-clockwise, we have R.F. Outcault's Buster Brown, Winsor McCay's Little Nemo, Nemo's buddy Flip, Frederick Burr Opper's Happy Hooligan, T.E. Powers' Gloom, E. Pluribus Dingbat from George Herriman's The Dingbat Family, Tad Dorgan's Silk Hat Harry, Mr. Newlywed and his baby from George McManus' The Newlyweds, Pinkey from Jimmy Swinnerton's Little Jimmy, T.E. Powers' Joy (who goes with Gloom), Pinky's friend Shrimp, Harry Hershfield's Desperate Desmond (who mentions Hershfield's other character Dauntless Durham), Polly's Pa from Cliff Sterrett's Polly and Her Pals, and finally, Jiggs from George McManus' Bringing Up Father.

Isn't it great to see all these comic strip characters having a wonderful Christmas celebration together? I'd love to be there, if it were possible. If only I was a comic strip character who lived in 1913.