Nostalgia & History > The "Lost" Bumstead Engines

From the King Features website:

"From flapper and playboy to pop culture icons. It was way back in 1930 when Dagwood Bumstead first met Blondie. (Consider yourself a true fan if you know Blondie's maiden name.)
Created by Chic Young during the dark days of the Depression, Blondie was introduced to readers as a flighty gold-digger -- a "screwball" heroine with many beaus, including Dagwood, heir to the lucrative Bumstead Locomotive Works. A natural bungler, Dagwood was wonderfully inept as a suitor. But to make matters worse, the J. Bolling Bumsteads -- Dagwood's wealthy and rather stuffy parents -- opposed the match.

Blondie might have faded into oblivion but for a stroke of creative genius: the couple really fell in love. Dagwood defied his parents, went on a 28-day hunger strike, was disinherited, and married his Blondie anyway!"

But for that fateful Depression-era wedding, what kind of products would we have seen from the "other" BLW? What wheel arrangements? Practical, "lucrative" designs, or perhaps the technological equivalent of the Dagwood sandwich?

And what would have become of Mr. Dithers?

-YD-

Blondie Boopadoop.

In 2003, one of the last living links to the Bumsteads passed away. Penny Singleton, who played Blondie opposite Arthur Lake's Dagwood in all those black-and-white movies, was in her mid-90's. I suppose it is hard for younger folks who have come of age in the computer era to understand just how much the Bumstead clan meant and means to some of us older types. As for J.C. Dithers, he would probably have still run his construction company, but he would have been bored to death without Dagwood Bumstead as his foil. If Dagwood had stayed in the family business, maybe he could have gotten the duplex to perform properly!

I used to enjoy watching the old Blondie and Dagwood movies. (the ones that had Penny
in them). I still read the comic strip :)

I'd say the Centipede fills that bill perfectly--truly a Dagwood sandwich on wheels!