Vintage 1970s “Sex Relieves Tension” Decal 😏 — NOS Great Western Enterprises Adult Humor

Sex Relieves Tension? 😏 Vintage 1970s Water-Slide Decal, Great Western Ent., Spearfish SD, NOS

Size: 4" x 3"

😏 It's the birds and the bees, drawn about as literally as you can draw them: a grinning bumblebee buzzing off with his stinger trailing behind him, and a little yellow bird flat on her back in the nest with her wings flung out. SEX relieves TENSION. It's an unused water-slide decal, still on its backing paper in a clear sleeve, and it came out of, of all places, Spearfish, South Dakota.

🔍 What's On It

A blue panel with SEX in big red letters, relieves in white, and TENSION in red hand-lettering, over the bee and the bird in her straw nest on a leafy branch. The back of the backing paper has the Directions for Applying: dip the whole decal in water for about 30 seconds, slide it onto glass inside or outside, or onto hard-finish luggage, and sponge off the gum so it doesn't check or curl. My favorite line: "If applied on cars do not place on windshield or where it might impair drivers vision." Good advice.

At the bottom it reads GREAT WESTERN ENT. INC., RR 2 BOX 421 S, SPEARFISH, S. DAK. 57783, with a charging bull logo lettered GWE inc, and SEND $1.00 FOR COMPLETE LIST.

🐂 Great Western of the Black Hills

Great Western Enterprises was a Black Hills souvenir house. It made water-slide decals, gold "Emblem" stickers for cars, campers and the rec room bar, and postcards of buffalo herds and campgrounds, all with that same charging bull. It also had a humor line it called Funny Things, which ran to jokes like a Pope Paul VI decal reading "The Pill is a No-No," a crack at his 1968 birth control encyclical.

The company started out at P.O. Box 602 in Rapid City and later moved to the rural route address in Spearfish that's on this one. Its own printed prices tell the order. The Emblem stickers went 49¢ at the Rapid City box, 69¢ at both addresses, and 79¢ only at Spearfish. And the Rapid City box was still printed on a Sears Tower "World's Tallest" emblem, which can't be older than 1973. So the Spearfish address, and this decal, most likely come from the 1970s, and the dealers who sell Spearfish-address pieces call them 70s too. The ZIP code on the back proves at least 1963 or later.

⛪ Spearfish, South Dakota

Spearfish sits at the mouth of Spearfish Canyon in the northern Black Hills. It was founded in 1876, first called Queen City, and it's the biggest town in Lawrence County, whose seat is Deadwood. The Spearfish Normal School opened in 1883 and grew into Black Hills State University, and the D.C. Booth fish hatchery opened in 1896 to stock Black Hills streams with trout. In 1970 the whole town was about 4,600 people.

And here's the part I love. From 1939 until 2008, Spearfish was home to the Black Hills Passion Play, the story of the last days of Christ, staged every summer in a 6,000-seat outdoor amphitheater. Josef Meier had settled his Luenen Passion Play there in 1938. So the same little town that put on the Passion Play every summer was also mailing out decals like this one.

🐝 The Birds and the Bees

"Sex relieves tension" was a popular novelty gag. Russ Berrie put it on one of his little Sillisculpts statues, which he started making in 1968, and it turned up on iron-on transfers, mugs and bumper stickers too. Great Western's artist took it straight to the birds and the bees, the old way of explaining sex to children with bees carrying pollen and birds laying eggs. That phrase is usually traced back to Samuel Taylor Coleridge, whose 1825 poem "Work Without Hope" has the bees stirring and the birds on the wing, and it was a common saying by the late 1800s.

You don't see many of these. Most of them got soaked and slapped on a car window the day they were bought, and the backing paper went in the trash.

📏 Details

• Vintage 1970s "Sex Relieves Tension" water-slide decal, birds and bees cartoon
• Made by Great Western Ent. Inc. of Spearfish, South Dakota, charging bull GWE logo
• Application directions printed on the reverse
• About 4" x 3", unused, in a clear plastic sleeve, New Old Stock
• You'll get one decal like the ones shown

🖼️ Frame it for a bar, a garage or a rec room, or put it on a window. Just keep it off the windshield, like the man says.