Even More Faultfinding

Another batch of Find the Fault has come my way. This transport related set reflects Britain in the mid-1950s but could have been offered for sale many years later in line with the Dennis Productions business model – why innovate when you can profitably recycle? The drawings are conservatively styled – no flamboyant gestures, neutral in tone, soberly conceived. Something of Ant and Bee (Angela Banner, illustrated by Bryan Ward) about them but lacking the eerie precision that gives the former such a haunting presence. Road transport features on most of this series and makes up this selection. The streets and roads are orderly and soporific. Stiff and robotic figures are posed at intervals, with eyes downcast and devoid of social interaction. Vehicles and signage appear anachronistic and there lurks a suspicion that dark events may be playing out just off-stage. The imagination is encouraged to fill the spaces that mediocre illustration leaves blank. The listed faults are often pedantic in the extreme but the idea of a double decker bus lacking a staircase is admittedly unsettling. Pedantry is infectious and unrecorded faults can soon be found – such as the presence of a smoke-emitting pipe smoker on the lower deck of a bus in No. 37.

More Faultfinding

It’s almost 10 years since we first looked at Find the Fault. Dennis Productions sold party games like this, decorously branded as the “Dainty Series” for more than 40 years from the 1920s to the mid 1960s. The party was pretty much over by the time they invested in this facelift with new illustrations in what might be called mid-century contemporary style. All extraneous detail has been eliminated along with much of the charm. What remains is brushed out areas of flat colour and expressionless drawing. The unintended result is a series of minimal compositions inhabited by rigid figures lost in existential introspection. The best estimate date is 1959 to 1962 and the pictures describe a Left Behind Britain that existed at the time, every bit as much as it does today. The Left Behind Britain of the 1960s was a rapidly decolonising former imperial power outside the European Union (or Common Market as it was then known). Governments and public alike were waking up to the fact that in Continental Europe a programme of infrastructure and industrial renewal had been underway for over a decade leaving Britain far behind in industrial productivity, transport networks, shipping handling and product development. Forty years inside the EU and this deficit was never fully overcome but we are assured that once we have escaped the dead hand of the EU a golden future will unfold. Our prosperity and quality of life will be the envy of the world. Britain will finally be open for business – just as soon as the doors are firmly locked and bolted. For more examples of fault finding, please follow the links, here and here.