The Allen Ginter Project: Card #8 - N31 Worlds Dudes

This is probably the weirdest set among the Allen and Ginters I'm collecting. I'll just let you look at it for now so you can figure out for yourself what the hell is going on here.

Don't worry, I'll still have my normal whacked-out write up of the set up later. I just need to flush these through because they are starting to pile up.


Ok, writer's block is over. This odd looking fellow is from Allen & Ginter's N31 set entitled "World's Dudes". No, not dude as in this Dude:


But dude as it was meant in the 1880's, an upper-class city slicker type as in the term dude ranch. Forbes and Mitchell's American Tobacco Cards describes this set as "an Allen & Ginter attempt at satirical humor" which is a much better description than what I thought up: "a set of cards featuring people who have caught teh ghey". To be fair, not everyone in this set looks gay, many are obviously just upper crust fashionistas and metrosexuals. There were a bunch of humorous card sets put out during the time, and many of them featured stereotypes. Duke cards had a bunch of these types of sets including one, Terrors of America, which had a card featuring a bunch of rotten kids (the 'terrors' of the set) chasing after some poor schmuck in a suit which was entitled "Get onto the Dude". I guess since many of the manufacturers were based in the rural south, caricatures of northern city slickers would have been popular. A lot of the humorous sets of cards don't really translate well today but these are actually still pretty funny simply because of some of the absolutely ridiculous clothes some of them are wearing. "Artist" and "Neapolitan" come to mind among the ones I've seen.

My Dude is looking stylish in his Rowing Club uniform. You have to admit skin tight purple pants, a striped yellow muscle shirt topped off with a purple polka dotted straw hat is really a timeless look. I never ever want to find out why he's wearing elbow-length gloves though. I picked up this fine hunk of a man from eBay seller lakotainc at the same time I won my Osprey for the low, low price of $4.99. I suppose it's all right to be cheap as long as you don't look like you're cheap.