I love a good bad pun, but even I wince at some of the stuff the greeting card industry has put out in the name of St. Valentine.  Once, a grade-school rite of February was acquiring a book full of these groaners on punch-out valentines, which you then had to allot to each person in your class.  I dimly recall thinking even at age eight these were pretty terrible, but in third grade, you don’t have a lot of choice as a consumer. 

These forty-year-old valentines now seem shockingly primitive, to boot.  I suppose the jokes nowadays involve wii and google. 

N.B.  I have no idea who made these cards.  Since they’re almost all punch-outs, there’s not a scrap of evidence, but they are American, from about 1960-1962.   I know these aren't all precisely puns, but rather lame double-entendres.  The only thing lamer is my photoshopless formatting. 

Can flat-screens be anthropomorphized nearly this well?  But the pun is stretching its credibility. I guess T.B. and an iron lung were too grim.

 

When did they give up on bubble-headed astronauts as romantic figures, I wonder? 

No pun here, either, just good old-fashioned stereotype-reinforcing. Or is it encouraging diversity and biracial couples?  I can’t tell.

Fat jokes were always touchy.  These are what you gave to people you didn’t like that much.   I can tell by the signatures on these the feeling was mutual.

 A few years ago the Vermont Teddy Bear Company put out a teddy bear in a straight jacket for Valentine’s Day.  That was special.  This mental illness reference is a little more benign. 

As if the frighteningly clownish teapot man isn’t bad enough, this nightmare swivels to…

This.  I’ll bet the designers had a good laugh over all the layers in this one.  It’s signed shakily, in pencil,  “Doug.”  I can’t remember a Doug.  Thank god. 

 What is it about teapots?  Note aorta appearance of stove.  I find this card almost as unsettling as teapot man.  

 Would being on someone’s TIVo list be the same?

Making another forty-year leap backward, here's what  passed for cheap kids' valentines  ca. 1920.

These are fold cards, and each has a  sweet poem inside, printed in a lovely font, backed by a pretty line drawing.   There are no bad puns!  Was there a paradigm shift in the greeting card industry during the Depression? Is the dumbing down of kid culture graphics the fault of Walt Disney?  Eh, who cares?  Nothing is as pretty as Dog 1, who celebrates her 14th birthday today.  Here she is with her own special Valentine.