1848-1872 1873-1897 1898-1913 1914-1945 1946-1990 1991-2008
Modern Postcards
1946-1990
Changing times have often inspired the development of new styles or genres, but in the years following the Second World War there would be a marked difference in regard to postcards as outside forces worked to diminish variety. Other than trends found in architecture the idealism and optimism found in early modernism largely faded away in during the Great Depression and war years that followed. For the most part graphic design would now only incorporate modernist concepts in superficial ways, and we would never be as modern again. The rising costs of printing would make the photochrome card dominant at the expense of other beautiful printing techniques. Content was often curtailed or self censored in fear of red baiting or litigation by offended parties. As the Civil Rights Movement forced America to confront many of its social prejudices, it did not inspire additional postcard content but hastened the removal of racial imagery from them. The pinup, which had often been viewed as a sexualized ideal of an independent woman began to be drawn in more sexist terms as woman were encouraged to confine themselves to domestic life. And as hardcore pornography became more readily available interest in the traditional pinup declined. Images depicting the social concerns of the day largely left the surface of postcards and became the domain of newspapers, pictorial magazines, and eventually television, leaving cards as a tool of escapism. As Americans took to the road in ever increasing numbers, postcards were almost exclusively being manufactured with the tourist in mind. But even here the growth of the banal steadily replaced the unique in our landscape and then on our postcards. Attempts to revive prewar nationalist ideals would fail as America’s social climate continued to shift toward more individualistic pursuits. As interest in postcard collecting began to make a comeback, it rose to become one of the most favored of all collectable items. But there was a difference to these new collectors. With historical retrospect in their possesion they largely focused on cards from the past rather than on those contemporary cards that lacked much appeal.
In many ways the linen postcard that dominated the beginning of this period was a transitional product. Though it made use of modern colorant technology and the newly developed high-speed presses, its production was still rooted in the procedures used at the turn of the Century. Advances in offset lithography would turn the public’s eye toward the photochrome, which continues to dominate the current postcard market. This new type of postcard would be produced on scientific principals without the need for artists. It would also give most postcards produced from this point on a uniform look.
ON THE ROAD
As GIs returned home from war they were faced with a looming housing shortage. But cheap production line Cape Cod style houses would soon spring up in the old potato fields of Hempstead L.I. This planned community of 17,000 homes became known as Levittown. It would become the model for the suburban sprawl that is still overtaking us. Cars were needed to live here, and they were purchased in droves adding to our romance with them. These houses were marketed as closed off from the street, to provide a peaceful environment for our war weary veterans. Instead of addressing war related stress, a climate of denial was created. As in the post war years of the American Civil War, when veterans headed for the West, the same restless spirit arose as these new veterans took to the road.
This new migration did not often extend past the families paid vacation time, which about half of our nation’s workers now had. The improved highway system allowed Americans to explore rather than follow the prescribed tours of years past. Where natural or historic monuments did not exist, attractions were built in their place. Dinosaur parks, giant teepees, and Paul Bunions lined our roads begging the tourist to stop. They along with curio shops, drive-ins, diners, gas stations, and motor-courts became the staple of Roadside America postcards. No other single activity would have as much influence on the postcards of this age. By 1950 there were 40 million cars on America’s roads, about out one for every three people.
Even though the wealthy were not traditional consumers of postcards, the graphic arts that most affected their early design came from art movements that largely produced goods for those classes. It was also not uncommon to see old postcards depicting romanticized snippets of life from the same upper class. Modernism, which had been more concerned with the lives of ordinary people had much less effect on the graphics of postcards. But over the years images of high society faded as the preoccupation with more pubicly assessable activities grew. The growing ability to take to the road opened up many new opportunities to market cards to motorists. Roadside imagery and places of interest to ordinary Americans would now begin to dominate postcards. But at the same time less care would be given to their design.
BAD CARDS
While many beautiful postcards were created over the years, there have also been many cards that have been poorly printed since their inception. These are the cards manufactured by printers who used as little color ink as possible, applied it in broad swatches to avoid time consuming retouching, and took little care to properly register plates. While occasionally such a card can still hold a simple charm, more often than not they are just plain ugly. Many of these cards also exhibit characteristically bland subjects so uninteresting one wonders today why they were chosen at all. The preponderance of such cards may give us pause to think we do not fully understand the environment they were created in. While many cards do not seem to contain any desirable qualities, it might not be the difference of perspective between time periods, as much as the lack of taste or bad decision making. Not all publishers were good businessmen, and poor decisions often forced them to end their postcard endeavors. After WWI there was a general drop in printing standards and those who tried to revive quality work often faced failure with a public now unwilling to pay for it. And as in our own time there is a market for almost anything if the price is low enough regardless of quality.
It is usually the postcard with a overtly political or patriotic message that is given the label of propaganda. What is closer to the truth is that most commercially successful cards are propaganda. These are cards that present very selective subjects or scenes in an artistic, sentimental, or romanticized manner. While they promoted certain ideals, they were also attractive to customers who were comfortable with these same notions regardless of whether they represented reality or not. Some publishers just did not get this. They created cards that were truly a slice of life but were rarely attractive to anyone not personally attached to the content. Today both types of cards can have historical importance for one represents an acurate view into a past physical environment, while the other demonstrates a state of mind.
OFFSET LITHOGRAPHY
In 1875 a lithography press was fitted with an extra cylinder to transfer an image off a stone to a piece of sheet metal. The original roller was wrapped with cardboard but it would be replaced with a rubber cover a few years latter. Though technically the first offset print, this process was abandoned as cut rubber plates made for the faster letterpress rotary presses replaced it. This new process was called Flexography, and it became the most common way to print on fabric, metal, and cardboard. It had very limited use on postcards, restricted for used on only certain novelties made of unusual materials.
A method to transfer photographs to lithography stones had been available since 1857. Stones however could not be stereotyped around the cylinders of rotary presses that dominated commercial printing at the end of the Century. Zinc lithography plates were adapted to the rotary press in 1868 but they wore out too quickly with their delicate surface for most commercial use. The solution to this problem was discovered about 1904. Certain lithography presses used a rubber covered impression cylinder, as used in flexography, in place of the scrapper bar suspension that passed over the paper during printing. If the press ran out of paper, the rubber cylinder would receive the impression from the stone instead. If printing resumed before the cylinder was cleaned, an impression would be made on both sides of the next sheet of paper. When Ira A. Rubel noticed that the side printed on accidentally by the soft rubber was sharper and richer than the intended side by the hard stone, he was inspired to design an offset press.
Unfortunately Rubel died soon after his discovery and it was left to Charles Harris to invent the first Rotary Offset Press. Here the image is transferred from a metal plate to soft roller and then on to paper giving the plate a much longer working life. It was not an immediate success for the chemistry involved was temperamental and plates covered with photo emulsion had little shelf-life. Letterpress men despised the water jockeys that ran offset presses but this method gained popularity in the 1950’s after the 3M company developed an easy to use, storable metal litho-plate. By the late 1960’s offset had replaced letterpress almost entirely and it has become the primary method of printing used today. Almost all postcards are now printed in offset lithography. Halftone gravure remains it only competitor but it is rarely used outside the magazine or packaging trades.
PHOTOCHROMES (Chromes) 1939 - Present
Up until 1939 almost all color postcards were manufactured by retouching images taken from black and white photographs. The first color film was developed in 1907, but it wasn’t until 1936 that the first high quality, multi layered film was invented. Photochrome is derived from Kodachrome the name of this new Kodak film. The process camera now made color separations for litho-plates, taking four halftone negatives broken down into CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) colors. The different halftone screens were then rotated to create a rosette pattern enhancing the method’s subtractive color properties. The printed photochrome cards resemble color photographs even though made through halftone offset lithography. The Union Oil Company was the first to use photochromes in 1939 on the giveaway postcards available at their service stations. But with gas rationing enacted during the World War, they soon had little need to advertise and the technique was not revived until after 1945. Some publishers thought this process a fad and continued to print linen cards. But since the mid 1950’s almost all postcards have been printed as photochromes. Though the process has basically remained the same it has not been static as color quality has continually improved since the early dull grainy cards. Though these cards are considered modern, many of the scenes that they portray are now over fifty years old and they may have changed more than some cards of a hundred years.
POST CARD CLUBS
Scholarly writings on postcards during the Second World War helped inspire the formation of new postcard clubs at the War’s end. One of the first to arrive was the Metropolitan Post Card Collectors Club in 1946. While the clubs that formed in the Golden Age revolved around acquiring new cards through even exchange, these modern clubs now had some history behind them, which allowed postcards to be viewed in a more scholarly fashion. Historical perspective and rarity began to give cards individual values. As club members came into possession of large inventories of past cards from old collectors, stores, or attics, they began to sell these cards off rather than slowly trade them. From this the postcard dealer was born. As their numbers grew, clubs began to organize shows where collectors and dealers could meet. Since most collectors were no longer buying contemporary cards at face value, the ability to access these old cards is what allowed the hobby to grow. Club shows have remained the major source for obtaining postcards for collectors to this day.
END OF AN ERA 1952
On January 1st, 1952 postcard postage was raised up from a penny to two cents, permanently ending the era of the Penny Post Card. The postcard rate would be raised sixteen more times in the next fifty years and it is still heading upwards.
TRADING CARDS
The earliest cards depicting baseball players and their teams began appearing in the United States during the 1880’s as chromolithographs on trade and reward cards. Tobacco companies soon made these players a mainstay of cigarette cards. Japan began printing cards with baseball images as early as 1898, followed by Cuba in 1909 and Canada in 1912. As postcards became popular all sorts of baseball related material were printed onto them. Between the two World Wars sports figures were mostly associated with reward cards though they began appearing on arcade cards as well. As sugar interests began to overtake tobacco, baseball reward cards were added to the sales of chewing gum in 1933. Reward cards being non essential items disappeared during WWII and they never regained their former popularity. But by 1952 the Topps Gum Company was selling cards of baseball players along with their Bazooka Bubble Gum initiating the birth of the modern Baseball Card. While they were initially sold in the traditional manner as a reward for the purchase of gum, these cards took on a new form as they began to be purchased for collecting and trading with the gum only as an afterthought. By the 1980’s as general interest in collecting grew, baseball cards began to be created and marketed in more sophisticated ways with the investment oriented collector in mind.
Many other types of non-sports related trading cards followed in the wake of baseball card popularity. While the cards dating back to the 1930’s were tied to the reward card tradition, the newer post war trading cards were now sold for their own sake. As with Baseball cards, most adopted a standard size of 2 1/2 by 3 1/2 inches. This allowed then to be sold from vending machines as well as over the counter. The earliest of these cards carried many of the same subjects as postcards depicting planes. trains, and historic scenes, but science fiction and Cold War themes would be added in the 1950’s. Eventually many sets would be based on television shows and blockbuster movies.
The backs to most of these cards contained statistics on a sports players record or perhaps a simple narrative to describe the accompanying illustration. But despite their small size some non sports card series were printed with a postcard back so they could be mailed.
COLD WAR FAST FOOD
By the 1950’s the nation’s clogged roads sparked motorist demands for federal intervention, but it was Cold War fears that eventually tipped the balance of the debate. President Eisenhower seeing a need to evacuate American cities and supply aid quickly in the event of a nuclear attack, and inspired by the efficiency of the German autobahn system that he observed in WWII, initiated the construction of the U.S. Interstate Highway System. Ironically while most wars have inspired the creation of new postcards, it was these new highways allowing for faster travel from place to place that put and end to many bypassed roadside attractions and their accompanying postcards. At the same time the first fast food eateries began to pop up soon followed by chain motels. As the American landscape grew ever more generic, so did those roadside postcards that remained.
REPRODUCTIONS
As cards of the early 20th century grew old their availability grew scarce, many printed and real photo cards were beginning to be reproduced by the 1960’s. Some were issued to commemorate anniversaries, while historical societies and clubs printed others to raise money or just make images of interest available to members. On occasion these newly issued cards reproduced old photographs that were never originally postcards at all. These cards should not be equated with forgeries for they were made without any claims to be antique and if sold, were done so at contemporary market prices. Some reproductions may now possess an age and rarity that that places them in historical context in their own right, but also makes them difficult to date.
As various reproductive means have become more available to the general public, the ability to create forgeries has increased. The practice has not been widespread as the time and effort needed to create a good forgery cannot often be compensated for by the relatively low selling price of postcards. Still there are strange cards out there that are not real postcards, or are not as old as they may seem to be. The reasons for their creation often remain unknown, and they can be purchased or sold out of ignorance if nothing else. Only now with rising prices and better reproductive technology have forgeries become a worrying prospect to the unsuspecting. Caveat Emptor.
COUNTERCULTURE
Postcards throughout their history were largely produced for a mainstream audience. They reinforced national ideals either by design or by simply providing the public with what it expected. In doing so publishers often created stereotypes that also worked to limit our scope in the understanding of life’s complexities. Every postcard era tends to be described as the years of great optimism, and the cards themselves seem out of tune with reality. Even in the Golden Age of postcards, where many cards were used to express social or political concerns, the growing clouds of war that led to the cataclysm of the First World War were largely overlooked. Few images depicting the Great Depression exist on postcards. The same can be said of the turmoil created by the war in Vietnam. The emphasis in postcard production is in escapism, depicting the world, as we would like it to be.
While many see the 1960’s as the years of the counter cultural movements, it is only because they were the years many post WWII trends finally gained enough momentum to be noticed. As social norms were thrown off in the wake of WWI, so were they too after WWII with the Beat Generation, peaking in the face of war resistance to the Vietnam conflict. Postcards, which were now produced by a handful of industrial giants, were often seen as instruments of a culture asleep to reality. The counter cultural trends of the 60’s however did not work to stimulate more varied content on postcards, but rather separated itself from the establishment that produced them. Even for the more mainstream Americans that continued to buy postcards things had changed. As the public became more focused on individual concerns, they lost interest in cards as a learning mechanism. Postcards continue to loose much of their power to reinforce a now very unsingular national identity.
PSYCHEDELIA
By the mid-1960’s a new style was emerging out of California inspired in part by concert posters and the growing drug culture. This psychedelic style that incorporated swirling shapes with bright intense colors, and often flowers and rainbows, was meant to evoke a hallucinatory experience. It had a very powerful influence on fashion, music, and graphic design. The characteristics of this style however were so strong and difficult to integrate that it fell out of vogue before the decade’s end.
THREE DIMENSIONAL CARDS
Images that created the illusion of three dimensions from a two dimensional surface have existed before the first picture postcard was ever produced. Stereoscopy was the first technique widely used. Anaglyphs, which are made from overprinting a view taken from slightly different perspectives in two distinct colors followed in 1891. Although this method was used to make postcards it remained unpopular for the effect could not bee seen without wearing special filtered glasses. In 1965 a new form of 3D image was developed known as the Xograph. Here it was the textured plastic surface sealed to the top of the photograph that created the 3D illusion by fracturing light differently from different perspectives. These images found their way into magazines and onto postcards anticipating wide public appeal but they remain an acquired taste. Xographs remain the only type of 3D cards to be printed in number.
GALLERY CARDS
Though similar to advertising cards, gallery cards were derived from the tradition of formal invitations announcing up coming art exhibitions. They originally consisted of text only, for no illustration was need for an artist or gallery of acclaim. But as the number of galleries exploded in the 1960’s the cards were adorned with a reproduction from the show, hoping to entice collectors to drop by. Mailings grew larger in an effort to attract buyers in an increasingly competitive market. Excess cards were given away at the gallery for further publicity. To save money most galleries stopped using envelopes and started mailing them out as ordinary postcards. To attract even greater attention many took on shapes and sizes beyond the norm while others were designed as folding cards. These cards tend to become rare for they are produced in low numbers to advertise a one-time event for a limited audience and usually end up being discarded afterwards. Mostly saved by other artists, they currently have little to no demand as collectables though they do show up.
MUSEUM CARDS
While reproductions of art works on postcards have long been sold, the availability of these cards began to increase as many museums began to undergo changes in attitude in the late 1950’s. The fame of the American Abstract Expressionists had brought about an increasing interest in art among the general public and many museums took it upon themselves to direct public taste. Museums grew in size to house new works and offer an expanded range of programs to attract more visitors. An ever increasing spiral to obtain additional works and expand in size eventually took over. With prices rising in the art market so have the fundraising efforts of many cultural institutions. To increase their influence and revenue, museum gift shops have grown into a full fledge industry. Museums have become important publishers of exhibition catalogs and art postcards in numbers previously unseen.
As the printing industry downsized during the 1970’s to save on paper costs, postcards headed in the opposite direction. Many were enlarged from the standard 3 1/2 by 5 1/2 inches to 4 by 6 inches, which is the largest size the Postal Service allows to go through the mail at a postcard rate. Though mostly printed as bleeds, black borders became fashionable in the early 80’s. Continentals were a forerunner of the Supersize trend in marketing. Venders were able to charge more while customers got more card for their money. Today continentals are in strong competition with standard sized cards. More recently even larger sized cards are being produced, but they stretch the definition of postcard as they can only be mailed at letter rate.
While this larger size format was new to the United States, it had been used back on the continent of Europe since the late 1920’s, and thence the name Continental. Continental sized cards from Germany and the Soviet Union are the most common. These cards are not to be confused with modern reproductions of older cards, which are abundant.
ELECTROSTATIC PRINTING
Chester Carlson invented the first photocopy machine in 1937. An image could be scanned onto an electrically charge roller which would attract pigment through variances in static, then transfer it to paper all without any need for a film transparency. This idea was carried further when in 1968 Electromechanical Engraving was invented where an image could be transferred to a printing plate through electric impulses. This filmless method was naturally suited for the digital revolution to follow. By 1981 Electronic Page Makeup Systems were developed where an image can be moved directly from a computer onto a sheet of paper. Electronic scanning has also replaced process cameras for color separation because of its greater accuracy. With electrostatic printing small quantities of prints can be made economically. With no set up time for presses there is no need for minimum press runs. This technology is currently changing the printing industry once again.
MAIL-ART
Mail Art has been around since the turn of the 20th century as many tried to expand upon the meaning of Art. The anti-establishment ideals of such early movements as DADA were pick up in the early 1960’s by Fluxus, a group concerned with intermedia art forms. As the fine art establishment of the late 60’s did its best to stifle all competition in order to solidify their hold on the marketplace, it soon became stale and moribund while claiming to be cutting edge. Many artists left out of the system found ways to rebel by using experimental art forms. One of the more creative methods inspired by Fluxus was Mail-Art which grew into a movement by the 1970’s. Original works of art were made that could be sent though the mail without any container, only postage attached. A common form taken was that of the postcard. Much of this work was used as networking within the artistic community. Exhibitions were also held to which work would be mailed, shown, and then discarded afterwards. It was a poke in the eye to the over seriousness and commercial emphasis of the gallery scene. In Eastern Europe mail-art had a different evolution with more political implications. All sorts of media were used, many incorporating rubber stamps and the emerging technology of photocopiers. For the most part this innovation ended in the 1990’s as more and more artists started to network on the Internet. Even so at the same time the activities of the International Union of Mail Artists have steadily grown. This was a large and international movement and there remains much debate on its definition, origins, and current status.
PUNKS AND GOTHS
By the mid 1970’s the seeds of Punk Rock began to grow in New York’s downtown neighborhoods in rebellion to the comfortable mainstreaming of Rock & Roll. The subculture that emerged was aggressive, anti-establishment, and most of all fun. A very distinctive style emerged that was both inventive and offensive, valuing raw honesty over slick production. Its major influence was on music and fashion but a new raw graphic style followed. While it had little impact on the overall production of postcards, much crude cut and paste high contrast graphics were used on cards to promote clubs and bands. While it began as a true popular movement, conscripting simple production means available to anyone and clearly individualistic and anti-commercial, by the early 1980’s it was already commercialized and parts mainstreamed. Post Punk apocalyptic visions became the backdrops to movies and fashion layouts. Though tamed its original spirit continues to inspire new artists.
As Punk Rock faded the Goth element within it began to grow. While it has remained a subculture and lacks a singular message, it has assumed recognizable if not mainstream forms. It tends to embrace the darker side of the human condition harkening back to the morbid gothic romanticism of the 19th century as in the likes of Poe and Shelly. While a long standing component within Western culture, Punk gave these elements a new face. It has resisted being assimulated into popular culture largely do to our current emphasis on seeing the world in one dimensional forms.
LIMITED EDITION CARDS
While some of these modern cards are printed for the benefit of postcard club members, they are mostly made with the collector in mind. They are an offshoot of the limited edition collectables market for such items as plates and figurines, but have little to do with the tradition of postcards. They are not created to be mailed but saved as investments. Normally such items would be marketed as prints except these are made postcard size to target the specific audience of postcard collectors. The term Limited Edition is mostly used today as a marketing ploy to denote an objects rarity and implied value. In reality the term has little meaning as no collectable can be produced in infinite numbers though some try. In the Fine Art print market, editions of more than one hundred copies are considered to be abusing the term.
The work of most artists were usually reproduced on either gallery cards or museum cards. But as conceptualism changed the face of art, regular postcard publishers began producing images of some of the larger public displays by better known artists. While the artwork itself was radically different from that of years past, publishing public sculptures on view-cards was an old tradition. But in the modern climate of seeking a hot collectable item many of these otherwise ordinary postcards were autographed. It is difficult to say if this adds much appeal for today’s postcard collector or if it finds a larger audience with those who collect autographs.
MEDIA HYPE
Television, movies, and music did not just become major influences on public taste by the 1980’s, they were in the hands of fewer companies leading to the cross promotion of products on a scale never before seen. A popular TV series could suddenly generate interest in a subject that few ever paid attention to and generate a whole series of spin off products. While many of these products were controlled by different branches of the same conglomerate there was usually plenty of room for others looking for a quick profit to jump onto the band wagon. Even though a good deal of trash was promoted this way, it also allowed works of artistic and literary merit to reach the broader public and further open up a world of ideas. This sometimes even filtered down to postcard publishing where a specific genre of cards would be produced for a suddenly newfound audience.
NATIONAL POST CARD WEEK 1984
There has been a growing trend in recent times by the Government to assign days, weeks, and months to commemorate various special interests. So many have petitioned Congress to have their passions recognized that we have run out of dates and many honored occasions now overlap. Since 1984 National Postcard Week has been added to this list. During this time collectors and postcard clubs often release their own published postcards to mark the event. It is celebrated during the first full week in May in both the United States and the United Kingdom. Although created to bring attention to postcard collecting, it has largely remained an insular event lost among the many other such weeks.
GENDER BENDER
For all of postcard history, cards have been largely used to reinforce mainstream values. Some publishers may have had specific agendas, but most just went along blindly doing nothing that would decrease sales. While the ways in which women were depicted changed over the years, these views rarely captured a true sense of reality. For the most part depictions of women were limited to being objects of desire from portrayals of innocence to eroticized nudes. There was always the odd exception such as the preponderance of cowgirls on Western cards, well out of proportion to their true numbers. Cowgirl was an acceptable role because it was an aberration, and it reinforced the American ideal of rugged individualism. But for the millions of women who labored in factories they barely received notice for they were the reality that did not fit into America’s mindset. As women received the right to vote and made ever increasing demands on society, they were depicted less and less in a romanticized manner and took the form of pinups and the butt of dumb blond jokes. But as the Women’s Movement gained momentum this type of imagery dramatically decreased and by the 1980’s it was rarely seen. Socially unacceptable ideas do not sell postcards, though sex still does and it continues to be widely used.
Gays were one of the few non-socially accepted groups not traditionally targeted for degradation by postcards. For the most part they were invisible within society and postcards clearly defining them are rare. Depictions of lesbians are far more common for they form part of a classical tradition found in the arts and they were also employed to engage male fantasies on risqué cards. As gays, encouraged by the civil rights movement, demanded equality their presence among us has become clearer. Since the 1980’s gay content can be found openly on postcards. But with their lifestyle not totally accepted within mainstream society, cards depicting gay themes remain popular only within a niche audience and they can engender hostel response if displayed in the wrong environment.
Many old postcards showing men or women intimately engaged are now characterized as having gay content but these claims make more assumptions than can be proven. In the age when proper behavior between different sexes was of paramount importance and carefully controlled, members of the same gender acted more freely with one another for they were largely ignorant that anything could be implied. The turn of the 20th century was also a time when gender roles were being redefined and many images pressed definitions in ways that are now difficult to interpret. Being gay did not always have great stigma attached to it. While not considered acceptable its existance was often quietly acknowledged but not discussed preventing it from becoming a socially consuming issue. At other times the slightest innuendo could end careers and family relationships. Many Pansy Clubs that operated openly in the 1920’s would have feared to do so in the decade before and after. Without knowing the mindset of the publisher it is impossible to tell if certain cards are portraying a subtle subversiveness to then current values or a simple playful naivety.
POLITICAL CORRECTNESS
In the 1930’s the production of cards containing overt sexual innuendoes was widely distributed. While there was some backlash against sexual content in the 1950’s, especially against those saucy seaside comic cards in England, they regained their popularity in the decades that followed. But by the end of the 1960’s social attitudes began to change and interest in this type of imagery began to dwindle. As these new attitudes developed into something close to a movement in the 1990’s, many publishers became self censoring and began to remove any sort of imagery or language from their cards that might inspire litigation or public protest. The concept of limiting all language that may be offensive to help implement positive social change is still with us, but it has since declined in popularity under fierce criticism of free speech advocates.
