Sunday, December 16, 2007

AUTO-JOKER


This thing really baffles me. This is called the Auto-Joker and it reads, "Fasten each wire to spark plugs; when victim steps on starter it will shoot, whistle,scream, smoke, and shoot again. Registered U.S. Patent Office No. 354,934 I really wonder how many of these were made before somebody figured out that planting fireworks under the hood of your "victims" car was a bad idea. The patent date makes no sense either as that number would date sometime between 1885-1890. I don't know maybe one of you can figure it out?

5 comments:

Chopperdave said...

lets try it!

Ken said...

The Auto Joker

It was a JOKE back when people laughed. Before there were drive by shootings.

I recently saw an Andy Hardy 1939 movie on TCM channel. Someone put one on Mickey Rooney’s old Ford

The auto Joker whistled like a bottle rocket, then a firecracker went off sounding like a cherry bomb, then white smoke lots of smoke and then it whistled again, it probably took 30 seconds. Very funny to watch.

I was in High School in the 50’s and they cost twenty-five cents. We put them on our own cars sometimes at the drive-in-restaurants. Sometimes on teacher’s cars and

You wrap a wire around a sparkplug then ground the other wire.

In 1955 a buddy of mine put one on an old coot’s 37 Ford Pickup.
The old man was pain in the butt. When he started the old Ford it whistled then banged, the old guy opened his hood and beat the hell out of the distributer with a hammer that he had in his hand at the time. He couldn’t see what he was hitting because of the white smoke. It was funny, especially watching the old guy chasing my buddy.

That was in Ohio. In the late 50’s the Mob started blowing-up Cadillac’s in Youngstown and the Auto Joker kind’a went out of style.

They were really silly back then when life was simple.

junkman said...

what is 1 auto joker worth?

radio-active said...

I just found one of these. Can't find much on the web about it. No patent number on mine -- can you verify the patent number on yours? I wonder if it'll still work after all these decades?

Unknown said...

My friend has one I'm holding it in my hand now...he got it at an estate sale