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PUNTASTIC PUNS
Punny Stuff
Puns are not rubbish as it’s definitely bin fun checking out all the puntastic stuff going on in the greeting card world as word play secures its place as a staple of greeting card humour. Here, PG hears from some publisher pundits. Body parts, farts, poo and puns might be basic but they still make people laugh, and that means publishers are onto a winner with designs that mean these needs.
Above: Bewilderbeest’s Iain Hamilton is a great punster. Above right: Lucy Nicholson has room for more at Lucy Maggie.
“It still tickles me, after 20 years, when customers stand in the shop and go from gentle tittering to full-on belly laughing at the cards,” commented Dominic Early, who sees things from both sides as Earlybird Designs is a publisher with its own retail shop in Stoke Newington. With that in mind, he’s just revisited one of his early pun card ranges and came up with a new neon Super Fab range featuring word play – and when the design featuring a “hap-penis” joke was picked by his 17-year-old son Oliver as one he’d send to his pals, Dom knew he was onto a winner. “They’re pretty much on every order now,” he added, “not just birthday either but all the relations and occasions are as 12
FOCUS ON HUMOUR CARDS
well. We’ve definitely hit a sweet spot and expanded them quite quickly. “I drive Heidi, my wife and business partner mad with some really bad puns but at least it makes us laugh!” For Bewilderbeest’s Iain Hamilton “puns are a major food group in the greeting card humour diet” even though he knows some people are put off by them and many are overused. However, Iain added: “Even if a pun only makes us groan, there’s still something about it that engages our brain in putting two and two together. My best argument for this is that we know the Christmas cracker joke is going to be a terrible pun, but we still read it out to the group, and everyone groans along together. “I expect an early caveman made a poor pun about having a club sandwich, but whether there’ll still be puns 3,026 years from today remains to be seen. It’ll be 5050!” At The Grey Earl, Jon Bishop definitely loves a pun with his Old Skool collection mixing the word play and 80s retro
imagery to great effect, and it’s very popular with those who remember Cassio calculators, shellsuits, Space Invaders and the original Rubik’s Cube. And Emotional Rescue’s creative director Jennie Rutter admitted: “Puns have always done well for us, we always think we’ve exhausted them until one of our writers does it again with a new one – my favourite new one is ‘Old cod-ger, it’s just a fish-ous rumour’!” The pun-ishment must fit the crime at Hallmark where head of brand marketing Jess Lovelace entered fully into the spirit: “Puns will always have a place in greeting card humour, they’re just so easy to send and so accessible for everyone! The key, of course, is making sure the pun is perfectly in sync with the purpose of the card. Our Googly Grub range is all about food puns and, as far as we’re concerned, there’s Left: Retro humour from The Grey Earl. Below left: Hallmark grubs up punny business. Below: One pun grew a whole Lucilla Lavender range.