Caption:
“So … you wanna sell our pencils, do you?”
No alt text
Page couldn't be archived
this post was submitted on 17 May 2026
63 points (98.5% liked)
The Far Side
7503 readers
420 users here now
Hello fellow Far Side fans!
About this community and how I post the comic strip… Many moons ago, I would ask my Dad to save the newspaper for me everyday so I could read my favorite comic strips and one of those was The Far Side. These days of course you find just about anything online including www.thefarside.com where they post several comics a day and I repost them here. Just to note, the date you see in my posts is not the initial release date, but the date they were posted on the website.
The Far Side is a single-panel comic created by Gary Larson and syndicated by Chronicle Features and then Universal Press Syndicate, which ran from December 31, 1979, to January 1, 1995 (when Larson retired as a cartoonist). Its surrealistic humor is often based on uncomfortable social situations, improbable events, an anthropomorphic view of the world, logical fallacies, impending bizarre disasters, (often twisted) references to proverbs, or the search for meaning in life… Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Far_Side
Hope you enjoy and feel free to contribute to the community with art, cool stuff about the author, tattoos, toys and anything else, as long it’s The Far Side!
Ps. Sub to all my comic strip communities:
Bello Bear !BelloBear@lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/c/bellobearofficial
Bloom County !bloomcounty@lemm.ee https://lemm.ee/c/bloomcounty
Calvin and Hobbes !calvinandhobbes@lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/c/calvinandhobbes
Cyanide and Happiness !cyanideandhappiness https://lemm.ee/c/cyanideandhappiness
Garfield !garfield@lemmy.world https://lemmy.world/c/garfield
The Far Side !thefarside@sh.itjust.works https://lemmy.world/c/thefarside@sh.itjust.works
Fine print: All comics I post are freely available online. In no way am I claiming ownership, copyright or anything else. This is a not for profit community, we just want to enjoy our comics, thank you.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
This is based on a trope that doesn't really happen any more. Rather than begging, homeless people would sell things and pencils was a common item. The joke is that they were really representatives of a big pencil conglomerate and would be fortunate to be able to go into pencil retailing.
I remember newspaper machines used to have have boxes with the day's paper. You'd put a few coins in, open the box, and take one paper from the stack. I imagine that was also an available resource for merchandise for re-sale.
I hear people in Argentina are hard-selling socks in the street, too, so the tradition is still alive.
I ran into a homeless dude in Chicagonselling tourist magazines, I told him I didn't need a magazine but appreciated he was at least not just asking for money and gave him some cash anyway.
Streetwise has been a thing in Chicago for decades as well!
The Big Issue is the UK equivalent. Evidently both were inspired by Street News in NYC, which is the the first with that purpose.
The Danish counterpart, Hus Forbi
It happens all over the world.
Larson's context is American cities. When I was a child I would see people selling pencils, shoelaces, and combs like this. Poverty is a much bigger problem, but I haven't seen that kind of retail in decades. Stuff on blankets, yes. But not small consumer goods. Hans Christian Anderson wrote about the little match girl, but I have never seen a child sell matches either. I have seen children selling gum in Mexico.
Exactly my point. You said it's an old trope that doesn't happen anymore. It may not be pencils specifically everywhere, but it most definitely still happens in the general sense. You have the kids selling chicle in Mexico, people (especially kids) sell toothbrushes in east Africa, adults sell 10-packs of tissues all over the world, hell, I've seen people walking around selling bottles of water in Vegas.