Ceci n’est pas un gadget : Pif Gadget et la merveille sous cellophane

Abstract

Offered to Pif Gadget readers in transparent cellophane, advertised on the cover and supported by editorial content, the gadgets contributed greatly to the magazine's editorial success from 1969 to 1993, in the form of a playful, scientific and experimental invitation. Launched by means of marketing techniques that did not speak their name in a communist magazine (1969-1973), the gadget helped to boost the periodical's sales and to found an imagined community of young readers, who learned to cultivate, assemble or manipulate the “surprise gadget” that became, less than an accessory, a sort of three-dimensional section of the newspaper. Questions of reading and popular culture were shifted to those of learning through toys or games, to constitute a material and visual culture for the masses, who took hold of them in the long term, to the point of making these small objects part of their heritage.

Keywords

• youth press
• collection
• heritage
• pop culture
• object
• marketing