Posted in: Comics | Tagged: oni press, sdcc, snap bracelets

Oni Press Is Bringing Comics Into Classrooms, Smuggled Inside Fashionable But Deadly Snap Bracelets

We think we can all agree that more comics in schools and libraries is a good thing. Oni Press recognizes this truth, and they've got a great promotion at San Diego Comic Con to help make it happen.

For any librarians or teachers at San Diego Comic Con today, Oni is handing out snap bracelets with PDFs of their graphic novels, as announced by publicity manager Rachel Reed:

And while we appreciate getting comics into the hands of teachers and librarians on any level, it especially warms our hearts to see Oni using the deadly snap bracelet as the tool for getting comics into schools. That's probably because we were in school when the original snap bracelet panic occured. Let's take a trip back through our memories to 1990 (via the New York Times):

PELHAM, N.Y., Oct. 10— Children in this suburb of New York will just have to suffer being unfashionable, at least during school hours, because the slap-bracelet has been banned at two elementary schools.

The low-budget bracelets, which come in wild patterns and neon colors and coil around a wrist after a well-placed slap against the skin, are not allowed at Colonial and Siwanoy schools because of the possibility of injury, their principal, Joseph Longobardi, said Tuesday.

The bracelets are nine-inch flexible metal slats, much like Venetian blind material, covered with bright colored fabric. If the fabric wears away, Mr. Longobardi said, a sharp edge could be exposed and cut hands and arms.

Everyone of a certain age remembers the initial snap bracelet craze, and the resulting backlash, as stories of razor sharp metal slicing children's arms spread from school system to school system. There were debates about whether all snap bracelets were deadly weapons just waiting to injure kids, or just the cheap foreign knockoffs:

The ban in the two Pelham schools is of concern to Gene Murtha, president of Main Street Toy of Simsbury, Conn., which makes the Original Slap Wrap and sells it for $2.49. He said injuries were not coming from his product, but from cheap imitations made in Taiwan and illegally sold in this country for as little as $1.

In Connecticut, Walgreens pulled foreign-made slap-bracelets from the shelves of its 16 stores Tuesday after a 4-year-old girl from Wallingford, Conn., was reportedly cut by one.

"The metal is inferior, low-grade caliber steel with poor-quality fabric," Mr. Murtha said of the imitations. "The sealing is also inferior. The steel can either break through or snap through and cause injury."

He said his product, which took a year to research, is made of a high-grade quality steel with rounded edges and a double-knit fabric that is tightly sealed.

Of course, modern snap bracelets are made of plastic, not razor-sharp metal, so no need to worry about Oni's comic-filled usb drives slicing unsuspecting children to ribbons. But we prefer things the old fashioned way, which is why we've broken out our old collection of authentic vintage snap bracelets, which we're going to snap on right now and bask in nostalgia.

Let's see here, just snap it on– AAAGGGHHH! OH GOD! THE BLOOD! THE HUMANITY!

Folks, we've gotta take a little trip to the emergency room and see if they can reattach our arm. If you're a librarian or a teacher, stop by Oni's booth at San Diego Comic-Con between 2-7PM and pick up some comics hidden inside the coolest piece of lower arm fashion accessory since the fingerless glove!

Enjoyed this? Please share on social media!

Stay up-to-date and support the site by following Bleeding Cool on Google News today!