Inexplicably Bizarre Picture Postcards

I have a tendency to collect things that most people would consider weird, so of course I'm attracted to picture postcards featuring hilariously or frighteningly strange images. I expect that some of you SCF members have similarly bizarre postcards in your collections (ikeyPikey, I'm looking at you...), and I'd love to see them! Even though my first example is from the U.S., I wanted to put this in the World Picture Postcards forum, in order to encourage an exchange of weirdness from all around the globe.

So I'll kick this off with a postcard mailed from the metropolis of Lapwai, Idaho, to the equally bustling metropolis of Kamiah, Idaho, in 1909. Both towns are on the Nez Perce Reservation. I have no idea what the Bug Club might have been, nor why anyone would have wanted to elect someone to be a member of it. Whatever it was, it apparently wasn't a specifically Idahoan thing, since the card was printed in Germany, apparently for a company in New York (Taylor, Pratt & Co?).

Not Mine

My initial quick thought was maybe it was a club for VW Beetle owners since it was printed in Germany, but that obviously is not the case given a postmark of 1909 and the first production of that car in the late 30s. There apparently is such a club currently operating in NH. Given those facts and the face, antennae and legs on the runner, maybe it really was a reference to some kind of insect-studying activity.

Apparently there were a variety of similar cards.

https://www.amazon.com/elect-member...p/B00OYKDZPY

Interesting! I never would have guessed that it was part of a series.

Bug in car:

https://www.picclickimg.com/d/l400/...-THE-BUG.jpg

Bowling Bug:

https://storage.googleapis.com/hipp...1e8b-300.jpg

Any old stoners out there? Wish you were here man.

Re: The Bug Runner

I'm gonna guess that the Bug Club card is (what we now know to call) appearance shaming, in much the same spirit as that inexhaustible universe of fat-shaming UK beach cards.

Aviatik got the play on words (below).

Cheers,

/s/ ikeyPikey (who posts his inexplicably bizarre picture postcards under his Magical Mystery Postcard series)

Aviatic, present and accounted for. Only a momentary lapse of reason.

My guess as to the bug club cards. "Bug" has been replaced in American slang by "nerd" or "geek" now but, back when the cards were new, anyone who was over the top enthusiastic for a sport or hobby was a "bug" for that activity. As in--"Camera bugs were out in force Tuesday due to our president's visit."

The cards may have been just a humorous way to acknowledge a fellow enthusiast.

That sounds reasonable to me.

Not a stoner, but I recognized the art of Hipgnosis immediately.

I'm bumping this topic because I picked up another bizarre old postcard at the Vintage Paper Fair in San Francisco this past weekend. If the woman were waking up with crabs, that would make some sense to me, but a lobster? Or does the Maine Mafia threaten people by putting a lobster in their bed instead of a horse's head? I just don't get it.