Garry and Caroline Myers retired from Children’s Activities and started Highlights on a shoestring in the small town of Honesdale, Pa. In those days, the cartoon was called “The G-Twins,” and Goofus and Gallant were depicted as elves, with pointy ears, jerkins and shoes with curly toes. Garry Myers started the feature in October, 1938, while he was an editor at a magazine called Children’s Activities. “What you know about them you build in your mind,” says Brown, the editor. “He had something he wanted to get off his chest: ‘Gallant was a wussy.’ ”ĭespite all we know about Goofus and Gallant, we haven’t many clues about their backgrounds.Īre they related, or even acquainted? Where do they live? What about their families? How old are they? “I got a letter from an attorney who’d grown up with the feature,” says Rich Wallace, the magazine’s coordinating editor. Naturally, kids more readily identify with Goofus than Gallant. We can easily imagine him as an adult weathering a mid-life crisis, wondering why he never had any fun. A Jungian might say he represents our sunny side.Īnd while he’s not technically perfect, he always does the responsible thing, even when he makes a mistake. With a smile on his face and a song in his heart, he makes the world a better place. He’s a neatnik, polite to his elders and always thoughtful. Nevertheless, Gallant gets all the good press. “I tell them we don’t think of them as good or bad. “We get letters from children who believe nobody could be as bad as Goofus all the time and nobody could be as good as Gallant,” says Jean Wood, the senior editor who has written the feature for the past 10 years. He plainly was born under a bad sign, a fact that has not been lost on the magazine’s young readers, some of whom write indignantly on Goofus’ behalf. A Jungian might say he represents our shadow side.įor decades Goofus was depicted with a demonic scowl, and while that has been toned down, he still has a stubborn flip in his hair that spells trouble. He’s impulsive, greedy, lazy and hedonistic. Ne’er-do-well Goofus always puts his worst foot forward. The contrast is as stark as the cartoon’s pen-and-ink artwork. The other panel extols Gallant’s praiseworthy comportment. One panel shows Goofus engaged in some antisocial behavior, which is described in a caption beneath the picture. Myers, a psychologist who with his wife, Caroline, founded Highlights in 1946. The feature still follows the format established by the late Garry C. (“Secretly, we’re flattered,” Brown says.) Goofus and Gallant have also been much-parodied in college humor magazines, eliciting obligatory protests from the magazine’s editors.
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