It's one thing to build great bikes, but ultimately, you have to be able to sell them.
Well, the Shelby Cycle Company, came up with one of the more interesting ways, to advertise their brand.
They teamed up with Harvey Comics Publications and created action hero and bicycle safety advocate, Bobby Shelby.
In 1941 Alfred Harvey started a comic book series that would become pretty well known. Titles such as;
Little Audrey, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Baby Huey, Herman & Katnip, Mutt & Jeff, Sad Sack, Ritchie Rich to name a few.
Within each one of these comic serials, you could find a one page exploit of Bobby Shelby and his trusty stead.
Bobby Shelby was a freckle faced kid, with a bright red sweater and a big yellow S emblazoned on the front, who would proclaim the safety virtues of the Shelby built bicycle.
One of my favorites was, Bobby Shelby Outruns a Forest Fire. In this episode, Bobby is on a family camp out, when he notices the start of a forest fire. So, he jumps on his Shelby and rides to notify the Ranger.
As he bombs down the rutted out truck trail, he exclaims how glad he is, that he has a Shockease equipped bike to smooth out the rough road.
At the bottom of each comic strip, was an order form to join the Bobby Shelby Safety Club. You would recieve a booklet and a decal to display on the fender of your bike, to show, that you were a bona fide member of the Safety Club.
Every once in awhile, a bike will show up that still has one of these decals on the fender, and the cool factor of that alone, makes for a pretty great find.
It has been speculated, that the inspiration for the character, Bobby Shelby came from the nephew of company founder, president and general manager, Uncle Joe Seltzer.
I don't know if that's true, but it makes for a pretty good story.
