Red and Rover by Brian Basset for January 19, 2012

The mustache was a dead giveaway!

Can the Avon Lady be far behind?

He should comb his mustache.

He must have eaten more than the Full Brush Man, but not as much as the Fullest Brush Man.

LOL!! Calvin’s dad would be yelling, “Calvin!! I need my briefcase for work!!”

Red has slipped back to the 1950’s again!

finkd: Comparatively funny.

I hope he finds plenty of cool customers.

Sometimes I’m confused about who Brian Basset thinks his readers are. Wouldn’t most people have to be on Social Security to even know what a Fuller Brush Man was? Or at least watch 1940’s movies on Turner Classics?

(Ashburn: Your Lebanon, PA, salesperson must be like the Japanese soldiers they used to find on various islands who didn’t know the war was over.)

I haven’t thought of Fuller Brush men for ages. We had their products for years. I may still have a brush or two lurking around here.

“Fuller” comes from a Hebrew word. A Fuller cleaned fabric with a special “filler” that took the stains out and made the cloth look white.

I kinda remember them giving away combs, but it’s the Fuller Brush letter openers I really remember — you could practice sword fighting with them!

JP: I still have one of their letter openers. In fact, I worked as a catalog distributer – one of many jobs working my way through college. Using those, one could make What’s My Line into a parlor game. For kiddies out there, clips of the show are available online before the censors take over.