Mark Liberman at the Log investigates the phrase “up/out the wazoo” and its eggcorn up/out to wazoo; that’s an interesting phenomenon, but what I want to make sure gets the widest possible attention is the splendiferous 1919 tobacco ad he turned up (via OCR error) in his search. It begins “Say, you’ll have a streak of smokeluck that’ll put pep-in-your-smokemotor, all right, if you’ll ring-in with a jimmy pipe or cigarette papers and nail some Prince Albert for packing!” It goes on for three more equally peppy paragraphs; Upton Sinclair was so upset he quoted the whole thing and called it “poisonous filth” in his book The Brass Check: A Study of American Journalism. Follow the link and admire this summit of advertising genius in its full glory, headed by a squinty, smirking, balding fellow smoking what I can only presume is a jimmy pipe.
Sinclair scrupulously changes “Prince Albert” to “Devil’s-dung”; he must have heard of the Streisand effect.
I am fond of peppy old ad copy, but I was unaware of this particular over-the-top subspecies, with its nonce compounds and nutty hyphenation.
Yes, I was surprised too.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Martin_Armistead
The man who coined the slogan “I’d walk a mile for a Camel”!
I still don’t get what a jimmy pipe is. Ngram
There’s discussion of that at the Log.
According to zafrom at the Log, Printers’ Ink and The Tobacco World credit Theodore B. Creamer with the “jimmy pipe” copy for Prince Albert.