(This editor feels entitled to use that hed, having dealt with a slight lisp for six or so decades)
From Chipster:
He notes that the discussion at GoComics suggests it’s the thimble from Monopoly in jail, and that while that sorta works, it’s not clear what the joke is or if that’s necessarily what Anderson had in mind.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I think the solution may be sewing, rather than board games. Normal thimbles are strong enough to deflect a needle, but this one needs to toughen up to be able to bend steel bars.
Alas, the questions run too deep
For such a thimble man
If it is the Monopoly thimble, I assume he went directly to Jail, did not pass Go, and did not collect $200.
It’s thymbolic.
Yes, the co-occurrence of Thimble and Jail do seem to say Monopoly. But that doesn’t provide much of a storyline, to go with the bodybuilding.
I figure the thimble rolled three doubles in a row.
Maybe it has something to do with thimble/dumbbell word similarites?
Well, they got rid of the thimble from Monopoly, now there’s a veloceraptor; also a cat, –and a …battleship? The last one is the only one that makes sense with the original given the theme of small random tokens that might be found around the house — oh, here’s the destroyer from Battleship, now you don’t need to sink my thimble anymore.
I always thought the thimble was the only one that was realistically plausible, and yet they made it too small to be a real thimble… Top-hat, always gonna be too big (unless it was a doll’s…?), ditto the iron (unless, again, it was a doll’s; I see a theme developing here…), the toy car would almost fit, if the scale were determined by a real thimble, and the dog I always assumed to be a porcelain figure, so it could be any size, though probably a bit bigger than the thimble. I can’t remember the others…
@ larK – A few years ago I saw (and immediately purchased) a discounted “80th Anniversary” edition of Monopoly from our local supermarket. One enticing feature was that the set contained a different player’s token from each decade of the game’s existence: Lantern, Race Car (trophy), Bathtub, Steam Engine, Cannon, Moneybag, Horse & Rider, Cat.
When Christmas rolled around, the game became a gift for our kids, and only then did I discover why it had been discounted so steeply: there are a few printing oddities on the board (for instance, the symbols for the Community Chest spaces are missing), and the design scheme for the fronts and backs of the properties made them rather difficult to read. The worst problem was that all the houses and hotels were plain (identically colored) wood (elegant, but confusing). I fixed that problem with an ounce or two of isopropyl alcohol and a few drops of red & green food coloring.
A quick web search found this. So, yes, your premise is correct. Just a setup I guess, with no real punchline.
https://andertoons.com/monopoly/cartoon/8923/thimble-waiting-to-get-out-of-jail
Aha! Thanks, now we know where to get the lowdown on Andertoons.
Thanks Grawlix. Monopoly it is. Has Andertoons been on reruns for a while?
I don’t know about reruns or not, but for a while recently the format Andertoons gets at GoComics has changed — now considerably larger, and clearer.
OK, my idea @1 was totally wrong, but if he’s just killing time while waiting to get back onboard, I would have thought he would want to practice his craps throws, rather than lifting weights.
P.S. Andertoons manages (and actively markets) a very large library of cartoons, while continually adding new ones to the archive. For this reason, the panels are never dated, nor visibly numbered. The latest panel on the website is currently #9221. Today’s Andertoons comic at GoComics is <ahref=”https://andertoons.com/love/cartoon/8965/lovers-leap-second-thought-bungee”>#8965, so there’s over eight months worth of cartoons before GoComics would “catch up”, and that’s only if no additional material is added to the archive.
Thank you, Grawlix.
Kilby: If I need to put a drop of paint on something, I visit the dollar store and buy a jar of nail polish. (For one, there’s a clock radio whose buttons were all black on black. A little red on one and green on another made it much more useful.)
@ Boise Ed – That’s a great idea, I’ll keep that in mind for other projects. I considered spray paint for the Monopoly houses, but decided on the alcohol + food color solution because I wanted a “stain” effect, rather than “paint”. However, when they were dry I did use a very light coating of clear spray paint to “seal” the result. The red for the hotels turned out perfect; the green for the houses ended up being a little too dark, but they’re still OK.
P.S. If I can find a heavy-duty thimble in a local sewing shop, I think I’ll add one to the set. :-)
P.P.S. @ PhSiiiCIDU – Your entitlement to use the term “hed” is presumably based on a similarly extended career in the newspaper industry? (Fishwrap edition, of course.) :-)
The battleship has been a standard Monopoly token for almost 90 years; it’s not new. Originally, it and the howitzer came from a game called Conflict that the manufacturer no longer made, so they used the dies and leftover tokens for Monopoly instead.
The board game version of Battleship didn’t arrive until 1967, well after the battleship was established as a Monopoly token.
My parents’ 50th Anniversary Edition of Monopoly included the then-standard array of 10 tokens (though colored gold) plus a unique Monopoly-train-engine token.
There is a licensed line of diecast model cars that include a reduced-sized token for use on the Monopoly board.
https://www.autoworldstore.com/products/johnny-lightning-pop-culture-monopoly-1933-willys-delivery-sedan-token-1-64-diecast
Kilby – My dad had an OLD Monopoly set (and it was old in the 1950s) from when he was young. (The board was separate and did not fit in the small box for the other game parts.) The houses and hotels were made of wood – but they were the same colors – red for hotels and green houses.
Powers – My dad’s set did not have a battleship – but I am under the impression that it dated to the 1930s.
@ Meryl (23) – That’s exactly what Powers said @20, the battleship in Monopoly is 90 years old (thus roughly 2023-90=1933). His reference to 1967 was to the game “Battleship” (as in “You sunk my…!“)
Okay – I came off smart, but that was not what I meant.
I actually meant dad’s set went to back to maybe 30s or else the 40s as it was older set. There was a smallish box for the pieces, houses, money etc. and the board did not fit in a box it was separate. Houses/hotels and the pieces were made of wood.
But it did not have a battleship (or any ship) – one of the few items I took from my parents’ house when we cleared it out (mom could no longer live alone – she is 94 now).
No, ran down and took a look – the houses are wooden and the pieces are metal.