A rack of quintessentially English 'saucy postcards' are on display in Scarborough, the northern seaside town. Telling jokes to send back to friends and family, they using cartoon characters of buxom women, hen-pecked husbands or sexually-frustrated young men, the humour is bawdy and cheeky - the epitome of seaside holiday kitsch. The best-known saucy seaside postcards were created by Bamforths (founded 1870) and despite the decline in popularity of postcards that are overtly tacky, postcards continue to be a significant economic and cultural aspect of British seaside tourism. In the 1950s, Bamforth postcards were among the most popular of the 18 million items purchased at British resorts.
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