In 1984, we were all suddenly playing games on our TV screens — “Pong” was the most popular one, I believe — but the fad didn't last too long.
Yes, that's absolutely correct, The Wall Street Journal printed this cartoon on December 18, 1997 and apparently liked it so much that they printed the exact same cartoon again a year later, on December 22, 1998. As one of my sons asked me in '98, “Did you get paid for it again?” I'm almost certain that the answer was no. So it looks like you owe me one, WSJ.
Actually, over the years, this type of thing happened to me on several occasions with other publications (but only this one time with The Wall Street Journal). Whenever it occured, I always chalked it up to either incredibly poor record-keeping or innocent human error. I can't imagine that any publication would deliberately want to repeat a cartoon that it had printed before.
Well, “to err is human, to forgive, divine”. So all is forgiven, WSJ.
This cartoon was also used on the cover and on the front page of a Wall Street Journal “Week-At-A-Glance” appointment book/calendar in 1987. Edited by Charles Preston, of course.
Here's another gag, published ten years ago, that would be timely and appropriate today. For two more election-oriented gags of mine, both published in 1982 and both with almost identical drawings, check out here and here.
Product bar codes were fairly new at this time. I think I may have had a caption, which was simply “Uh, oh.” The cartoon appeared without any caption. The point of the gag was to reflect everybody's concerns about where bar codes would go in the future.
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