Puce Stamps Series 2023

Puce Stamps were a running joke in the 1962 daily Pogo comic
strips by Walt Kelly. The Puce Stamps were making fun of the
popularity of trading stamps (with special reference to the widely
used Green Stamps). In 2023 however trading stamps are virtually
unknown. Kelly's stamp design brought up some 60-year-old memories
of pasting the stamps in the stamp books for the minimal cash
value -- as a 1960s child any cash of my own was worth wetting and
pasting the stamps and in truth the task did reinforce the solid
middle class capitalist values of accepting a pointless task,
carrying it through to its wasteful completion, and receiving a
miniscule reward for participation.

Quoting from November 27, 1962:

  HOWLAND OWL: Them puce stamps is okay far as they goes ...
  but we ain't pushin' em enough!

  HOWLAND: We gotta go on the air ... on the teevy ...
  in magazines an' newspapers ...
  make the public puce conscious!

  HOWLAND: America's biggest stamp! The only stamp
  you don't hafta save in order to get nothin'!

  HOWLAND: Think of the terrible Christmas presents
  you won't get from your friends what save puce stamps ...
  POGO POSSUM: It staggers the brain ...
  PORKY PINE: An' reels the mind!

In 2023, the stamps inspired a desire to participate in the parody
more than in the capitalism. Why not, I thought, repeat the joke
using new graphic technology? Good exercise in Scalable Vector
Graphics, pleasant hours revisiting Kelly's concept from some time
in the future, and an end result just as pointless as the original
Puce Stamps in Kelly's swamp world.