Anna Collins recently emailed me with some new information about the above image: that ubiquitous "You Want It When?" poster that's been around on office walls for decades.
She writes that she's the one who did it.
BACKGROUND: Where did that "You Want It When?" poster come from? Who drew it?
Like I wrote on the old MySpace April 14, 2006 edition of the Mike Lynch Cartoons blog:
The other day, Mark Evanier posted [the above] iconic image on his blog.And Mark Evanier provides the post mortem proof here.
Anyone who's done any office work in North America in the past couple of decades has seen this widely reproduced little poster of the laughing "You Want It When?" guys.
Mark asks: Who drew it and what is its origin?
... I've always wondered who drew it. It sure looks like a 1950s style. Most of my colleagues don't know where it came from. But a lot of cartoonists agree that it's Henry Syverson.
Above: a Henry Syverson illustration from the March 29, 1958 Saturday Evening Post.
For your consideration: Here is Anna Collins, who says she drew the original in 1978 that Syverson later copied:
I can clear up the origin of that cartoon for you. I did the original one that was coped, copied and then re-drawn by Henry Syverson.
I was working for a company (Lee Mark Elenka in Aylesford [UK]) in 1978 that had a problem with clients wanting deliver on items before we'd even received them.
I used Michael Bentine's book of cartoon drawings to get the idea for the figures and drew it with the wording on. This was one of many cartoons that I used to do.
My father (Ben Collins) who worked for Reed Paper Mills in Kent took a copy into work, they had a representative from the Daily Mirror come in who liked it and also took a copy back. From then on it was copied all over the place and I only wish I'd copyrighted it at the time as the numbers of times I have seen it I would have made a bit of money from it.
So now you know how it all came about. I am glad people love it.
Kind regards
Anna Collins
Alright, does this help clear or muddy the water?
I don't know the book that Anna is referring to. But, OK, Michael Bentine's Bumblies (above) sorta look like the Syverson nebbishes. Maybe Syverson picked up a copy of the Daily Mirror somewhere and saw it. Maybe he saw it somewhere else. It's hard to believe he decided to redraw the poster. Why would he? He already had a nice gig at The Saturday Evening Post. More likely it was a copy and paste affair like Anna did with the Bentine book.
Regardless, like Anna says, it was one popular sign.
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14 comments:
Interesting. It's one of those ubiquitous images that is part of American business culture. Nice to know some of the history on the cartoon.
If Anna says she created the YOU WANT IT WHEN cartoon in 1978, then Anna is lying!
The first time I saw this exact poster (with same caption) was in a small music reprint office in Los Angeles, called Alpheus Music, owed by Judy somebody, and this was in 1974.
Many orchestra parts for musical shows and movies were all hand-copied on transparent paper at that time, which we then had reproduced on machines like the ones that did reprints of architectural drawings. It was always a last minute rush for reprints. That is why the poster was so perfect for her office wall. At that time I got a copy of it from Judy and mailed it to a friend.
I am absolutely certain of the time frame because I Left LA the following year and never visited Alepheus Music again.
If Anna says she created this cartoon in 1978, Anna is either hallucinating or lying!
The first time I saw this exact poster (with same caption) was in a small music reprint office in Los Angeles, called Alpheus Music, owed by Judy somebody, and this was in 1974.
Orchestra parts for musical shows and movies were all hand-copied on transparent paper at that time, which we then had reproduced on machines like the ones that did reprints of architectural drawings. It was always a last minute rush for reprints. That is why the poster was so perfect for her office wall. I got a copy of the poster from Judy at that time and mailed it to a friend.
I am absolutely certain of the time frame because I Left LA the following year and never visited Alepheus Music again.
I'll also vouch for 1974 (or earlier afaik). I specifically remember seeing it the for the first time in an imported auto parts store that I frequented, while trying to keep my triumph Spitfire running as a senior in high school... in 1974. And it was already a multi-generation photo-copy.
My father drew this picture for my mother when they worked together at Tarmac in 1974. It was done for the print department. We're just looking for the original now. How do we go about claiming ownership for this? We didn't know that it had done the rounds, until we went to Greece and saw it on t-shirts!
My father drew this picture for my mother when they worked together at Tarmac in 1974. It was done for the print department. We're just looking for the original now. How do we go about claiming ownership for this? We didn't know that it had done the rounds, until we went to Greece and saw it on t-shirts!
I also vouch for 1974. I had just been hired as "The Girl" (yes, that was my original official title) at a small trucking company, Trans Jersey Express, in Avenel, NJ. Larry Kosko was one of two partners, and he had it taped to the wall by his desk. It was pretty tattered. I left a few years later as Administrative Manager. It was still there. I came across it a couple of years later while picking up my (then) husband's pay at B & B Motor Freight, Linden, NJ. I always assumed it was a Jersey trucking thing. I had no idea it was so widespread.
I personally saw a fellow co-worker draw that cartoon around 1971-1972. We hung it on our shop walls because we were in the service business and it went along perfectly for what we did. I worked there from 1969-1974 and that cartoon was history when I left there in 1974.
I just wrote a quick blog post about the discovery of what appears to be another figure by the artist of You Want It When?
http://kjdevries.blogspot.com/2012/04/you-want-it-when-1.html
My name is Kevin Ratello I am a collector of Antiques and collectibles I work as a private contractor. I did a clean out job for a nice old Jewish lady in her 90's who's husband past away last year. He served in WW1 and came to the United States to work for a printing company. The Lady told me she was selling the house in New Jersey to move with her kids to California. We rented a dumpster for the garbage,and when I went into the basement I found out he was a collector also. I found in a closet a You Want It When? Cartoon picture in color in a metal glass frame. I had it look at by a few Art Dealers in New York and New Jersey. I had it confirmed the picture cartoon in color was printed on transparent paper between the late 50's and or the early 70's I can be reached on Facebook Kevin.Ratello1977@yahoo.com
I know for a fact this picture existed in the 60's so the lady is lying!!!
I can assure you I wasn't lying or hallucinating in thinking I had done the original back in 1978. When my boss came and asked me to do the drawing he had a scrap of paper in his hand with four stick men and the words over it, all I can assume now after reading your comments is that he saw the original when he had been in the USA some time. I had not heard of Henry Syverson until 2010 when I contacted Mike and the first time I saw a printed version for sale in th UK was in the late 1980s. It would have been nicer to say I was mistaken than lying as it was a genuine mistake on my part.
I absolutely had this in my office where I worked in 1976. And it was not new then.
We used to Xerox these types of things we now would call memes and hang them on our office wallsor send them in the interoffice mail. I collected a folder full of this sort of thing.
I remember seeing the "You want it? When?" on stuff being sold in LA swap-meets, fairs around 1990.
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