It’s really hard to make anything with an etch a sketch, even their own r&d can’t do it.

I visit my local food pantry regularly, so I think I have some perspective.

There’s a state run mobile food pantry that makes up boxes of shelf stable foods to give out. It’s wonderful, but it’s always pretty much the same things every time-- canned corn, peas, tuna, fruit, spaghetti sauce, beans. They are clearly buying staples in bulk to give out, which makes sense for their process.

When I go to my local pantry, which gets a lot of direct donations, I can find a much wider variety of products. Canned chicken, nice soups, ravioli, artichokes, diced tomatoes, etc. It makes for a more varied and interesting diet.

Donating money is great and versatile, but donating canned goods can be valuable too.

Missing man formation

The military is making WMDs but can’t get the slides presented properly.

Please come to my house and enjoy all the juicy voles, so they’ll stop eating my beans and cukes.

Because “Indians” used to bury people this way as a form of torture, or test of bravery–only they probably didn’t really, at least not as much as movies might have suggested. Here’s a clip from the movie “Jeremiah Johnson” (1972), which was very well known at the time and probably inspired this strip: https://youtu.be/pYhlVR9GzjA?si=klSXoYG0m3ynJzE4

Currently, mmr is about 86% effective against mumps. It may have been less so in the 80s. Also, she may have only had one round of shots. Could be she was just unlucky, and her immune response wasn’t strong enough. It’s not unheard of.

I believe it’s referring to a barn dance They were popular at the time of the strip, except in this case, the band booked a barn dance with actual barn animals. I think the drawing style looks different because this is an early one, 1981.

In 1982, it would have been unheard of for a pet store to be selling snakes in a window like this. Puppies, bunnies, guinea pigs, sure, but not snakes. Maybe they would have one or two in the back of the store, but it wasn’t common. That makes this scenario unlikely and somewhat absurd. Plus, Larson loves snakes and probably this would have been a wish fulfillment for him.

Glade. “A small area of grass without trees in a forest.”