Studies in Crap: Clown-Crotch Birthday Cake & Other Unfortunate Crafts

Each Thursday, your Crap Archivist brings you the finest in forgotten and bewildering crap culled from basements, thrift stores, estate sales and flea markets. I do this for one reason: Knowledge is power.

Various Clown-Related Craft Books

Discovered at: Thrift stores throughout the Midwest

Post-Poltergeist, Pennywise, and that Pied Piper of diabetes Ronald McDonald, it’s

not news to point out that, on the creepy scale, most young people rank clowns somewhere between nursery rhymes sung in a minor key and mustachioed uncles who friend you on Facebook.

But since it comes from 1981, we must assume that this cake decorating guide is not meant to make kids feel safer by depicting a clown’s lollypop crucifixion. Instead, the designers at Wilton must have truly believed kids wanted a big ol’ slice of the crotch of a clown etherized upon a table.