The Whoopee Cushion: The History of a Fart Prank
It is the loudest, cheapest, and most democratic practical joke ever invented. Behind the whoopee cushion's rude raspberry lies a surprisingly deep history stretching from ancient Rome to a Canadian rubber factory.
What Is a Whoopee Cushion?
A whoopee cushion is a flexible rubber or vinyl bladder that, when inflated and then suddenly compressed, forces air out through a pinched opening to produce a loud, sputtering noise resembling a fart. The device works on a simple acoustic principle: as the escaping air rushes through the narrow, flattened neck of the bladder, it makes the two rubber lips vibrate rapidly against each other. These vibrations generate the characteristic raspberry or "Bronx cheer" sound. Classic models are inflated by mouth and placed, hidden, beneath a seat cushion so that an unsuspecting person sits on them. Modern self-inflating versions contain a foam insert that re-expands automatically, letting the prankster reset the gag again and again. Despite its crude reputation, the whoopee cushion is a small marvel of applied physics, and arguably the world's most popular flatulence simulator.
Ancient Roots of the Prank
Fart pranks are far older than rubber. According to the Historia Augusta, a notoriously unreliable late-Roman collection of imperial biographies, the emperor Elagabalus, who reigned from 218 to 222 AD, delighted in placing air-filled animal bladders beneath the cushions of his dinner guests and deflating them mid-meal for comic effect. Whether or not the story is literally true, it shows that the idea of a seat-based fart gag is ancient. Throughout medieval Europe, inflated pig bladders were common toys and prop instruments, used by jesters and children alike to mimic rude noises. The bladder's natural elasticity made it an ideal early instrument for comic sound. These crude forerunners relied on the same principle later perfected in rubber: trapping air and releasing it through a vibrating aperture to imitate the unmistakable sound of human flatulence.
The Modern Invention
The modern whoopee cushion emerged in the 1920s and 1930s at the JEM Rubber Company of Toronto, Canada. According to the widely repeated account, factory employees experimenting with scraps of thin sheet rubber discovered that trapped air escaping from a folded piece produced a hilarious raspberry sound. When JEM pitched the novelty, the renowned American prank manufacturer Samuel Sorenson Adams of the S. S. Adams Company reportedly declined it as too vulgar for his catalog. JEM instead partnered with the Johnson Smith Company, a mail-order novelty giant, which marketed the "Whoopee Cushion" to enormous success. Adams, regretting his decision, later produced his own version called the "Razzberry Cushion." By the middle of the twentieth century, the inexpensive rubber gag had become a fixture of joke shops, birthday parties, and April Fool's pranks all over the world.
The Science and Cultural Legacy
The whoopee cushion endures because it taps into something universal: the comedy of flatulence. Acoustically, it mimics a real fart remarkably well. Human flatus produces sound when pressurized gas forces the soft tissues around the anal sphincter to vibrate; the pitch depends on the tightness of the opening and the velocity of the gas. The cushion reproduces this exactly, with rubber lips standing in for sphincter tissue. Psychologists note that fart humor is a nearly cross-cultural constant, appearing in ancient Greek comedy, the plays of Shakespeare, and modern cartoons alike. The device has featured in countless films, television shows, and advertising campaigns, and inflatable fart novelties remain bestsellers. Simple, cheap, and instantly understood in any language, the whoopee cushion has secured its place as one of history's most enduring practical jokes.
Did You Know?
- The modern whoopee cushion was invented by accident by rubber-factory workers in Toronto during the 1920s or 1930s.
- The Roman emperor Elagabalus is said to have pranked his dinner guests with air-filled bladders nearly 1,800 years ago.
- A whoopee cushion and a real fart make their sound the same way: by forcing air through a narrow opening that vibrates.
- The famous novelty maker S. S. Adams turned the invention down for being too vulgar, then later copied it with his own "Razzberry Cushion."
Fun Fact
When the Johnson Smith Company first advertised the whoopee cushion, some retailers thought it so indecent that they refused to stock it, which only made it sell faster once word got around.
Sources
- Historia Augusta (Scriptores Historiae Augustae), Life of Elagabalus, 4th century
- Johnson Smith & Company, Catalogue of Surprising Novelties and Jokes, 1930s
- S. S. Adams Company, corporate history, Neptune, New Jersey