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This page: Out Of Gas, a hardback American cartoons book from the early fifties.

Out Of Gas by Syd Hoff.

A collection of US car cartoons from 1954.

In the UK we had artists such as Raymond Groves and Brockbank to provide us with motoring humour. In the USA a number of artists provided a similar service, one of which was Syd Hoff, as featured in this book, Out Of Gas!.

This hardback book, still with its original dustjacket, came out in '54, and was one of several cartoon books that Hoff created in the fifties, on a variety of subjects, not just motoring. Inside the dust jacket we're told that "... All are original drawings, done especially for this book, by the supreme authority on family situations - Syd Hoff ... ".

And true to form, many of the cartoons that Mr Hoff penned deal with the relationship of different family members towards each other - not least husband to wife. The very first cartoon shows a fella carrying a shapely young lady to the car prior to going on holiday, his wife already in the car gives a very frosty look - to which he replies "Everybody said I should take along a spare". In fact this guy's long-suffering missus is the brunt of many slurs, for instance (when looking at a wooded area) he says to his kids "Some of these trees are even older than your mother" to which she gives another disapproving stare.

The humour and artwork are less intricate than the Brockbank offerings in my opinion, but thats not to say they are not good - there are some very funny cartoons in this book, although the cars are generic car outlines, whereas Brockbank's car illustrations are often accurate to particular makes and models on sale at the time, or from earlier, vintage, times.

Other books that deal with car cartoons feature in this motoring humour section too, including some by the aforementioned Brockbank, so don't forget to have a look at them too!

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