Frederick Burr Opper - 1889 PUCK Cartoon - The First Mobile Game Craze

Some of the cartoons and comic strips that I love most are ones that reflect the society of the time. This Frederick Opper cartoon struck me as one that does just that. There's no caption on the piece, but the sight gag portion of the piece was of interest to me. Pigs in Clover might be considered the first single-player mobile game that took the country and world by storm. While ball-in-maze puzzle games had been around for sometime, Charles Crandall's Pigs in Clover struck a chord with the public in 1889, the year this cartoon was published in PUCK magazine. There is no year written on the piece, only the month of April. So hitting the PUCK archives online, I was able to find the published cartoon, which is a two-part piece. It was published in the May 1, 1889 issue of the magazine. I'll post the published version in the additional images section, but basically a magician tells the audience that something is wrong with "Hoodoo, the Automatic Coronet Player". What's wrong is Pigs in Clover. Beautiful drawing and solidly good gag.