Captain Tootsie

Captain Tootsie is one of the more interesting  superheroes of the Golden Age of Comics.  Debuting in 1943,  he sold Tootsie Rolls, those brown sugar-corn syrup concoctions, which gave him the "quick energy" to save the day.  His half-page adventures appeared in hundreds of comics, from Action Comics and Captain Marvel to A Date with Judy to Man. 

Captain Tootsie Battles Monster Man!
Captain Tootsie Tames a Tornado!
Captain Tootsie Traps Killer Bear with Invisible Light!
Captain Tootsie and the Return of Dr. Narsty!

Sometimes his adventures were a bit less urgent:

Captain Tootsie Saves School Party!
Captain Tootsie at the Winter Carnival!

 

Here he saves the world from Dr. Narsty, who has stolen a kid's toy cannon.  Hootin' Zoots! 

Captain Tootsie was drawn as a very muscular blond in a red shirt, yellow belt, and blue pants, which didn't look anything like the familiar brown-and-white tootsie roll.

His most frequent sidekick was Rollo ("roll-o", get it?), a miniature version of himself with blond hair, a red shirt, and pecs.

Sometimes he also hung out with Fisty, a petite black-haired boy wearing a suit; and Fatso, who had curly orange hair and wasn't very fat by today's standards.


More after the break

Davy Crockett and the Coonskin Cap Craze

During the mid-1950s, there was a craze for "coonskin caps" among the first generation of Baby Boomer boys: a faux-fur cap, round and furry, with a long tail, striped like a raccoon.

The next generation of Boomers found them ridiculous, but remember, this was the era of the crewcut.  With your hair trimmed so tightly that there's not much left, the coonskin cap serves as a nice substitute in cold weather.

And it gives you a nice phallic symbol to play with (imagine putting over your crotch instead of on your head).

Girls had big hair in the 1950s, so crewcuts were a means of gender polarization.  They were so popular that they had their own advertising icons, such as Johnny Crewcut in Boys' Life.   Here he advises kids to "practice undressing fast before bed each night."  The optimal time is under 20 seconds.

I've gotten guys out of their clothes faster than that.









The coonskin cap craze was generated by Davy Crockett, five episodes of the Disneyland  TV series in 1954-55, based on the real Jacksonian-era politician and folk hero, who died at the Alamo in 1835.

Davy was played by 30-year old Fess Parker, who had a master's degree in theater history from USC, but found himself playing coonskin-cap frontiersmen for the rest of his life.  Here's a rare shirtless photo.

I've never seen the miniseries, but they give Davy a sidekick, played by Buddy Ebsen (later Jed Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies), so there may have been some buddy-bonding gay subtexts.

He also hung out with such folk heroes as Jim Bowie (Kenneth Tobey) and Mike Fink (Jeff York), so there may have been some beefcake,

Davy Crockett has appeared in over 50 other movies and tv series, played by a surprising number of recognizable stars: Fred Gwynne, John Wayne, Johnny Cash, Billy Bob Thornton, Brian Keith, and John Goodman (on Saturday Night Live).

Jake Wynne (seen here at the New Orleans Shakespeare Festival) played Crockett in A Man of Reputation (2012), swapping tall tales with Mike Fink in a bar.

But none of them have ever come near the fame of Fess Parker, his coonskin cap, and "The Ballad of Davy Crockett"

Born on a mountain top in Tennessee, 
Greatest state in the Land of the Free. 
Raised in the woods so he knew every tree, 
Killed him a b'ar when he was only three.

Buster Brown Comics: 1940s Beefcake at the Shoe Store

The first generation of Baby Boomers watched some crazy kids' shows on their brand-new black and white tvs, like Andy's Gang, aka Smilin' Ed's Gang (1951-1960), with the screechy-voiced hosts Andy Devine or Smilin' Ed McConnll, the demonic hell-beast Froggy the Gremlin, and the live action adventures of a very Nordic "Indian boy" named Gunga (1955-60).

It was sponsored by Buster Brown Shoes, an attempt to get kids interested in the most boring item of clothing imaginable:  an elderly Little Person in an Edwardian sailor suit would say -- very slowly:

"I'm Buster Brown....I live in a sho....He's my dog Tige....He lives in there too.

The crazy advertising mascot derives from Buster Brown, an early 20th century comic strip (1902-1921) about a mischievous boy who has adventures and then writes a "resolution" to behave more appropriately in the future.

Like many tv series of the 1950s, it had a predecessor on radio, Smilin' Ed's Buster Brown Show (1944-1953), with Smilin' Ed McConnell hawking the shoes and reading the adventure stories.

With a tie-in comic book, Buster Brown Comics.  45 issues were published between 1945 to 1946.  You could get them for free at local shoe stores and department stores, which conveniently printed their addresses on the front cover -- presumably while picking up your comic, you (or Mom) would do some shopping.

Each issue featured a humorous story starring Smilin' Ed and the Gang, plus an adventure story starring a muscular teenage boy: "Leathern Cord of Magic," "Dude Ranch Desperado," "Leopard Men," "Desert Raiders," "Ghanga the Elephant Boy."

Most were scripted by Hobart Donovan, the head writer of Smilin' Ed's gang, and the husband of voice actress June Foray (best known for Rocky and Bullwinkle).  A number of artists drew the stories, including Ruben Moreira, Ray Willner, and future fantasy illustrator Frank Frazetta.

Remember, this was an era where movies never showed shirtless men except an occasional Tarzan or Bomba the Jungle Boy, and tv was a small black-and-white box with ghostly, hard-to-see images.  Comic books were your only source of beefcake images.

And you could get free beefcake comics every other month just by dropping in to a shoe store.

Sounds bizarre, but sign me up!

See also: Andy's Gang