What Is It? game 204



It's once again time for our collaboration with the always amusing What Is It? Blog. Can you guess what the pictured item is? Can you make up something interesting?

Place your guess in the comment section below. One guess per comment, please, though you can enter as many guesses as you'd like in separate comments. Post no URLs or weblinks, as doing so will forfeit your entry. Two winners: the first correct guess and the funniest (albeit ultimately wrong) guess will win T-shirt from the NeatoShop.

Please write your T-shirt selection alongside your guess. If you don't include a selection, you forfeit the prize, okay? May we suggest the Science T-Shirt, Funny T-Shirt and Artist-Designed T-Shirts?

For more clues, check out the What Is It? Blog. Good luck!

Update: the mystery item is is a check protector, it's a security device that marks the check when it's paid so it can't be cashed a second time and also prevents attempts at altering numbers. The first commenter who knew that was cbellamy, who did not select a prize t-shirt. The funniest answer came from Elim, who guessed it to be an antique squid ink extractor. Doesn't that draw a picture? For that, he wins a t-shirt from the NeatoShop! Thanks to the What Is It? Blog, where you'll find this and several other mystery items this week, all now revealed.

I suspect that's a medical implement from the 19th century used to brace body parts during surgery or amputation. the corrugated bits help it hold the skin better.
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The very presence of this device on the teacher's desk in 19th century schoolhouses was enough to ensure silence from trouble-making students.

Brainier than the Average Bear, XXL
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Obviously this was the first device that Little Debbie used to press Nutty Bars with their classic crosshatch pattern.

I heart 8-bit Video Games 2XL Black
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Still First Guess

This is what wives used to threaten their husbands with if they cheated. The product was originally called the manwich (sloppy joe).

Something Somewhere Went Terribly Wrong
Mens Large
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Used by the post office to perforate stamps on envelopes while canceling them. This caused the canceling ink to soak into the stamp, thus preventing people from washing the stamps and reusing the postage.

Battle Damage, in Brown, fat guy size 3X
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Early model Ronco Stud Setter, c. 1920s.
Be the berries as you doll up anything and everything, and how, from dresses to garters to shoes. Make your glad rags gladder! Make your chassis copacetic! Be as it as Clara Bow! You'll never be a flat tire with Ronco's Stud Setter. It's the cat's pajamas! Every keen dame has to have one, only $2.95 at Sears and Ro.

I really wish we could post audio here, because this needs a kick-ass Judy Garland impression and I happen to do a kick-ass Judy Garland impression.
Love is a Biohazard, Ash Grey, L
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the designs around the top of the device indicate the time period to be around the late 1400's, during the Spanish inquisition.
The spiked metal would probably have been used as a torture device in which limbs, fingers, and other extremities would have be placed and crushed, causing excessive bleeding, and broken bone fragments that would pierce the skin.
This device was painful, and so it lasted through the ages, being used again in the Salem witch trials in 1692-1693.
Larger versions were used to crush the body and elongated spikes in different versions pierced the skin and drew blood, as well as causing infection and gangrenous skin and pierced innards
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Hawaii, 1963, Dole Pineapple Factory. The head pineapple taster has, through over-consumption of the enzyme Bromeline, destroyed his last tastebud. He turns to the eminent inventor Professor Hubert von Hubert IV for help. Hubert toils for many months and finally devises what you see before you - The Acme Manual Glossolator, designed to imprint the tongue with a complete set of new tastebuds.

When Worlds Collide (Large) if successful please.
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SIMPLE! I saw this one just the other day. You see anger women used the deceive to seek revenge on misbehaving husbands. Simple insert and finger ( or anything other parts toes etc) into the deceive. Then press with all your might. The damage is unbelievable. Guess we know women where the pants in the family.

Women size medium
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SIMPLE! I saw this one just the other day. You see angry women used the deceive to seek revenge on misbehaving husbands. Simply insert a finger ( or any other parts) into the deceive. Then press with all your might. The damage is unbelievable. Guess we know women wear the pants in the family.
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This is a 2-bit employment generator used in the House of Representatives (US) and House of Commons (UK). Ideas are placed on the lower pad and are then pressed repeatedly until common sense, logic and usefulness are completely removed. The result is then passed as legislation, providing the legal community thousands of hours of useful employment hours trying to make sense of the whole thing.

Heart Deco S
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This is kind of freaky...I just had an article published in my local Patch (today) and I did the same item...except the one I posted is mine. But it's the exact same one!

http://brookfield.patch.com/articles/the-urban-archeologist-guess-the-gadget

#3 is the closest, though not necessarily a lawyers embosser. This would have been used for voiding checks - the teeth made a permanent mark that was easily noticed when sorting checks by hand. Raised bumps = canceled, cashed check. No Bumps = uh oh! Could be cashed again. 19th century.

I have a more detailed answer but give it to asif #3
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