Here’s a 1970s flashback for you: Dixie Riddle Cups! Even though most of the jokes were cheesy, kids thought these were the funniest thing in the world. Each cup contained 3 riddles and each box contained 100 five ounce cups. A box did not contain 300 jokes, of course. There were quite a few repeats. Did I mention the jokes were cheesy? The one that immediately comes into my memory is:
Question: “What did the limestone say to the geologist?”
Answer: “Don’t take me for granite!”
Sometime during 1970, Grandpa Durigan installed a Dixie Cup dispenser at our cabin in northern Minnesota and filled it with Dixie Riddle Cups. I don’t know if he purposely bought them or if he just grabbed a box of cups and happened to get one with riddles. In any case, us kids quickly discovered and fell in love with them. Just as we would empty a box of cereal to get the prize inside, we were pulling all the cups out of the dispenser to read the riddles! Dad would yell at us for wasting cups. “Don’t take one unless you really need it for something!” Which caused us to go into the lake, catch minnows in a net, then put them in the cups. Now, we had a need for more Dixie Riddle Cups!
By 1978, the cups were gone. Apparently, the novelty had wore off and sales were down. However, they made somewhat of a comeback in the late 1990s. Today, the original Dixie Riddle Cups can be found on eBay and similar venues for ridiculous prices. They might not seem so special to modern kids, but in a world before instant gratification via smartphone, these cups were a pretty great part of our childhood.
“If an athlete gets athlete’s foot, what does an astronaut get?”
“Missle toe!”