Country Boy: What are you doing?
City Boy: Drawing.
Country Boy: Where are your guns?
— Submitted by Steven Feinstein, 7, Philadelphia, PA (circa 1965)

Cracky the parrot was introduced in the role of mascot for Western Publishing‘s general-interest kids’ mag The Golden Magazine (1964-71), which heavily drew upon the successful Jack and Jill (published since 1938 by The Saturday Evening Post Society) formula.

For much of its existence, The Golden Magazine thrived, having access to top creative talent from the Western publishing empire (Whitman, Gold Key, Golden Press, Golden Book Encyclopedia…)

At first, Cracky stuck to sharing reader-submitted jokes. Then, around 1968, he began to show up on covers, generally depicted by versatile Canadian illustrator Mel Crawford (1925-2015). This is one such case, from April, 1969.

In 1970, Cracky saw his old job expanded, branching out into two titles, Jokes by Cracky and  Pencil Puzzle Fun…