Description
“Peek-a-Boo Cards” are marvelous survivors from the world of mid-century American gag gifts, carnival novelties, joke-shop merchandise and pre-Playboy cheesecake. The entertainment is almost comically simple: move a piece of cardboard and the respectable young lady loses another piece of clothing. What makes them especially appealing today is the combination of pin-up art, mechanical paper engineering and the slightly illicit wink with which they were marketed. A period reference even describes Sally as a circa-1940 “trick gadget” and vintage sleaze novelty.
Sally of Hollywood and Vine is the standout. A September 1948 Billboard wholesale advertisement pitched “The Mystic Tease — Sally of Hollywood and Vine” alongside other novelty-counter merchandise, establishing both the period and the original trade name. The Ace of Hearts operates on essentially the same principle, with printed directions explaining how the inserts are placed behind the illustration to produce the successive “acts.” Offered together, they make a terrific little pair documenting the playful, mildly naughty world of American novelty erotica before the men’s-magazine boom of the 1950s.
Two wonderfully analog pieces of American cheesecake: no batteries, no screen, no subscription—just a couple pieces of cardboard and a very patient young lady.
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