Since its debut in 1979, For Better or For Worse has touched comic strip readers as few cartoons ever do. Cartoonist Lynn Johnston’s eye for detail and her uncanny sense of what real parents and children struggle with daily are a big part of her success. The world has watched the Patterson family grow up in real time, and to many readers, the Pattersons feel like family!
Parents and children alike will relate to the obstacles that the Patterson family faces. Curfews, parent date nights, babysitting, pets and distractions are all hurdles that the Pattersons must overcome in order to enjoy each other as a family. They face the same obstacles that real life families do, which is what makes them so loveable.
© Lynn Johnston Productions, Inc. - All Rights Reserved.
Foolish Mortals by Tom Horacek
For Heaven's Sake by Mike Morgan
Comments (48) (Please sign in to comment)
hsawlrae said, 11 months ago
S U R P R I S E !!!
TrapperJohn said, 11 months ago
Never heard of horseshoe suckers. We usually bought Slo Pokes because they lasted the entire move.
Badfisherman said, 11 months ago
Hope they always stay young at heart.
howtheduck said, 11 months ago
Lynn Johnston, the author of our comic strip was born in 1947 and some of these references are old, even for her:
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Saturday matinee movies at the theatres were most popular from 1936 – 1945, and officially concluded with Blazing the Overland Trail (1956), the last ever movie serial to be made. Televisions put an end to this popular pasttime.
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Mission Dry Orange was originally bottled in unique black bottles, called brown in the comic strip above. Later clear ACL bottles with white lettering, sometimes with a black background, took the place of the black bottle. The first products were offered by California Crushed Fruit from Los Angeles. After the initial success of Mission Orange in the beverage market, the Mission Dry Corporation was formed and then later became Mission of California, Incorporated of New Haven, Connecticut by the 1950s.
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Scrub baseball is a way of playing baseball with no teams when you don’t have enough players to fill 2 teams. It was popular with sandlot teams and pretty much disappeared once Little League took over. By 1955, there was a Little League organization in each of the 48 U.S. States.
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I have no idea what horseshoe suckers are. Anyone?
dukedoug said, 11 months ago
@howtheduck
“Scrub baseball” … in Aus. we had “Scratch footy”, where the teams were picked “from scratch” from whoever was around … (and “footy” here means Aussie Rules).
pelican47 said, 11 months ago
In the mid -to late 1950s in Los Angeles, my sisters and I often went to Saturday matinee movies (for a dime), double-features with cartoons in between. I don’t recall serials, so maybe they were a bit outdated by then.
psychlady said, 11 months ago
Yeah, they were actually kids once, too!
Sandy67 said, 11 months ago
I am about Lynn Johnston’s age and we had serials until the late 50’s, usually westerns or super hero serials. we ate a lot of candy but I’ve never heard of the ones they ate and we drank coke or Nehei. They were fun times-we didn’t have to go with our parents.
furnituremaker said, 11 months ago
SUPERMAN AND THE MOLE MEN!!!!!!
KenTheCoffinDweller said, 11 months ago
Horseshoe suckers had a loop of twisted paper in place of a stick. Thus the “horseshoe” in the name. What their actual brand name was I don’t know, they most often, at least in my area, came in a long strip of sideways attached suckers.
Price about 1 penny depending upon where you got them.
frugalnotcheap said, 11 months ago
@howtheduck
That horseshoe sucker is vaguely, vaguely familiar: yes, I’d love a link to a picture, if possible.
TheMaven said, 11 months ago
@KenTheCoffinDweller
I never knew they were called horseshoe suckers. I recall them being called safety suckers. When I was a kid in East TN, I remember getting them at the teller window at the local electric co-operative when my mom paid the bills. The teller would pass back some suckers for my sister, my brother, and me. This was in the late 70’s.
gmartin997
said, 11 months ago
Funny, I can’t ever recall any of the adults in my family acting as though they were ever young.
Leghorn Foghorn said, 11 months ago
Back In my day, the Saturday matinee consisted of a western, a cartoon and a serial of Flash Gordon or some other series. The theater was a dime; Italian water ice was 3 cents, 2 stick pretzels for a penny and 5 cents for a box black crows, boy were we happy and we took all this in to watch the movie, all this for 25 cents, our allowance.
hausof7mau said, 11 months ago
@TheMaven
Don’t have a picture, but I’m thinking you are talking about “Safe T Pops”. The candy part was about the size of a 50 cent piece and the handle was, as mentioned above, a loop of twisted paper. There still around, usually in smaller towns, in general stores. If you can find a place that still sells penny candy, they might be there. They were still quite common into the late 60s at least.