Archie says his job gets "kind of butthole at times" in 1947 newspaper comic

[jsc1953]

Originally Posted by Evil Captor

They did all sorts of stuff along these lines back in the day. Here's a 1944 cover from a Marvel Comics publication: Gay Comics.

If you like bizarre comic book covers with snarky commentary, you could spend all day here. I know I have.

[Miller]

Originally Posted by jsc1953

Yeah, that's a standard use of Vaseline -- prevention & treatment of diaper rash. But jeez, that's an unfortunate slogan they chose.

I'm not sure about that. The picture of the kid has a band-aid on his forehead, and the text on the top of the jar on the display calls it, "The first-aid kit in a jar." Seems like they're trying to market it as some sort of treatment for minor cuts? Not sure how a jar of lube helps with that.

[TBG]

Wow, Lady Plushbottom got SERVED

[Patch]

Kinda hard to ignore Batman's Boner.

[Kimstu]

Originally Posted by Miller

The picture of the kid has a band-aid on his forehead, and the text on the top of the jar on the display calls it, "The first-aid kit in a jar." Seems like they're trying to market it as some sort of treatment for minor cuts? Not sure how a jar of lube helps with that.

The moist lubricant helps keep the sensitive abraded skin of a scrape or other boo-boo from chafing on the bandage or becoming painfully dry or cracked.

[psychonaut]

Originally Posted by Little Nemo

This. A butt used to be a wine-keg and the butt hole was where you poured out the wine. Similarly, a bung was a cork and a bung hole used to be where you poured stuff out of a barrel. It was from these meanings that butt hole and bung hole became slang terms for an anus.

Seems possible but unlikely, given that "butt" has meant "buttocks" almost exactly as long as it has meant "keg". According to the OED, the earliest attested uses for "bung" and both senses of "butt" date from 1440 to 1450.

[WotNot]

Originally Posted by jsc1953

Yeah, that's a standard use of Vaseline -- prevention & treatment of diaper rash. But jeez, that's an unfortunate slogan they chose.

Well, as you may have guessed, that image has been altered for humorous purposes. The original is much more straightforward.

[Bosstone]

Originally Posted by WotNot

Well, as you may have guessed, that image has been altered for humorous purposes. The original is much more straightforward.

Y-yeah. You could totally tell it was shopped. Wasn't fooled for a minute.

[The Shroud]

Is it possible the Newspaper Google scanned was altered by somebody (a la drawing mustaches on photos)? Or does it show up in other sources?

[jbaker]

Originally Posted by The Shroud

Is it possible the Newspaper Google scanned was altered by somebody (a la drawing mustaches on photos)? Or does it show up in other sources?

There are at least two different newspapers that ran the strip with "butthole." This makes it unlikely that the usage was either vandalism to the scanned copy or vandalism at a specific newspaper when the strip was first run.

[Tammi Terrell]

But, as Ben Zimmer notes in his 28 April post to ADS-L, one of the (now four) newspapers known to have run that particular strip published a version in which "butthole" appears as illegible or partially so. Ben found this case in newspaperarchive.com's reproduction of page 11 of The Zanesville (Ohio) Times Recorder. The entire page is now viewable at the URL below. Interestingly, it's just that one word that's particularly difficult to read; even the teeniest print on the page is easier to make out.

http://i14.photobucket.com/albums/a3...cky/Archie.jpg

So, perhaps -- as Ben suggests -- someone at the Zanesville paper was familiar with an offensive meaning for "butthole" and decided to have the word obscured before that day's issue went to press.

Further, as Ben points out in another posting, Green's Dictionary of Slang records a 1942 usage of "butt-hole" to signify, well, "anus," so at least the hyphenated form was known to some segment of America as a synonym for "asshole" when "butthole" appeared in Montana's strip.

[Tammi Terrell]

Actually, the PDF version of that page from the Zanesville paper has much better resolution. For the next couple of weeks the PDF can be viewed at

http://tinyurl.com/brk35f5