This question has probably been asked before but I'm curious and don't know the answer myself so I'll ask now. How old is WAM as a fetish community and what would be the earliest WAM content ever made? From my basic understanding, WAM goes back as early as 1989 when Splosh magazine was founded and in 1991 Messy Fun was created. But I feel like there might be earlier WAM then that though. Currious to see if WAM is older then 1989.

We've had cream pie slapstick for decades before those years when it officially became known as a fetish. I'm fairly certain that the earlier shots of women getting plastered by pies came from guys who had a secret fetish for it.

Here's a very old example. skip to 3:20 and see what is probably the first woman sitting on a pie, yet they had to do it tastefully. It is nearly impossible to watch without at least imagining how she felt squirming in a pie, then walking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aHY5SM0YFv0

Oh, yeah. I definitely know that slapstick comedy has been a thing for years now. My question is what is the oldest "fetish" WAM content out there. Like, content specifically made for people like us who love watching and/or getting messy ourselves. Who was the first person/company to make WAM fetish content?

Thanks for the gif! WAMTEC has that one listed as a "Cult 50s stag film." I can vaguely recall the dialogue:

"You wouldn't! Not in my own home!"
"Oh, wouldn't I?"
[splat]
"Ugh! How dare you!"
[over credits] "You deserved it."

The answer is probably "very soon after the invention of the cine camera", but I think the oldest specific made-as-WAM content I've seen is wetlook photos from the 1940s and 1950s. http://www.wamretro.com/ has material that goes back to the 1940s, and there was probably private, now lost, material made before that.

Damn. That is pretty old

I remember hearing there are recorded instances of mess being used in sex since the Rome era.
So when was it first used to create images or vids? Shortly after we were able to I'd guess. But just not very common. Porn is already a niche use, we are a niche within a niche. Plus ask any producer, a relatively expensive and time consuming niche.

I think it's entirely to do with the difficulty or not of finding your audience in the age before mass media communication. Magazine publication made it easier for those interested to find each other by correspondence - a chance themed shoot in an erotic magazine and someone might write in and say 'Hey! That's my thing'. It would take years to identify audiences for fetishes and the more obscure ones, decades. Notice that things like underwear were the first ones to reach a mass audience and wet look (which most heterosexual men can relate to in a world full of clothed women - it reveals a woman's form from beneath her clothes); and mud wrestling encapsulates a large number of erotic and tactile fantasies.

So it was decades before the likes of Bill Shipton, Mike Ellison etc. 'found' each other and realised there probably was an audience out there - but it really took the internet to really make it happen.

It was into the 1990s and late night television appearances by Bill that made me aware of WAM because I had no interest in porn mags (I was turned on mostly by women getting messy with their clothes on and vintage lingerie erotica) so I was never going to find out about it that way as many of my contemporaries did.

The oldest WAM scene ever put on screen would surely be this with Mabel Normand, who died in 1930 age 37, by which time she was already something of an outcast.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFpqFjDThBE

According to many sources, L&H's Battle of the Century (1929) was actually intended as a parody of earlier, slapstick films like Mack Sennett's and meant to pay tribute - a swan song to - the pie in the face joke.

The large scale (reputedly 5000 projectiles) served to overkill the joke about how this form of comedy was now so outmoded and puerile it wasn't viable. Many believed this would die along with silent film.

8 years later, The Marx Bros would cut the paste-up scene from a Day at the Races as they felt this messy kind of mayhem was low brow and beneath them

Are we talking slapstick or WAM? The latter (to me) is a fetish. A fetish can be as mild as a woman or man wearing a certain type of clothing or posing a certain way or even just their appearance - redhead, asian, big breasts. ect. But it is a turn on.

Both go back way before visual media or even media. A local rennaisance festival has had Mud Shows (slapstick). French aristocratic ladies in the 1700s would have water poured on their flimsy gowns to make them cling (fetish). There is crossover of course such as in Battle where Anita Garvin gets a first pie on her very nice tight dress ass, or the ingenue gets it on her ass at the end.

(And doesnt Anita Garvin still look hot almost a hundred years later?)

I think WAM is slapstick with a sexual overtone and the question should be about "content" produced specifically to satisfy that desire. I think the answer is mid-20th century with wetlook photosets and magazines like Splosh.

With respect to mud, the first known community might be some 1960's era apartment mudwrestling groups in New York City. Somewhere around that time AMFEM, a wrestling video company, started publishing a directory with producer advertisements and personal ads and since mud wrestling was mentioned, a lot of mud fetishists got in contact there. By sometime in the 1970's, the mud fetish community was loosely connect through James Reid in Memphis who was sort of a hub in the snail mail days. Somewhere in the '80's there was also a MudMen Magazine that was around for a few years.

I think Bill Shipton over in England was the first producer with mud content but Buff Films and Roger Carpenter weren't far behind. I think I was technically the first mud video producer in the US with my Have Mud, Will Wallow VHS mud video tape series that started in about 1983 or so but I was only in contact with about a hundred mud fetishists.

One of those mud fetishists was Rob Blaine and when my mud videos business started expanding and becoming a threat to my day job, I got Rob interested in producing mud videos and starting what became known as Messy Fun. The key aspect of Messy Fun was the Messy Fun newsletter which became the new contact mechanism for the snail mail community.

Buff Films and Bill Shipton achieved commercial success by mixing mud, food, and wetlook so as to have a wider customer base. Rob Blaine started this way as well. I was the first to offer mud only videos but the other producers started to produce mud only content a little later as the customer base grew and resentment started building at having to buy non-mud content to get the mud portion

Dave and Mud Puddle Visuals began from a contact with Rob but I'll let Dave fill in the story more accurately...

Where did you find that gif image?

Cool thread. I love history, and I love WAM, so I sometimes wonder about "WAM" in history, ie what other periods in history where there has been the right kind of humor and sexual attitudes to switch the lightbulb in some people's heads to think: "wow, I would love to see that Athenian priestess take a pail of olive oil and fig jelly to her lovely, pious face!"

My guess is it can happen when, besides material wealth and food plenty, maybe a bawdy sort of humor would have to be present? an inherent silliness and love of simple fun, easy laughter, and just.... I suppose that special sauce of getting warm under the collar up at the thought of getting or seeing someone get excessively dirty, however that happens (I've heard fetishes likely get start arbitrarily - at a young age one links sexual stimulation with something non-sexual - but then what we understand of sexual psychology seems to always be changing so who knows, not me). Seems like an innocent kind of sadistic glee helps as well, the humiliation factor, seeing someone getting their, ya know, just desserts

I'm not sure but it's interesting What cultures, and trends within those cultures, have you noticed that seem to make a propensity for people to enjoy wet and messy fun tending towards the sexual? It seems like British culture has for a long time been compatible with WAM-like fetishes. Not sure why, just seems to "fit" somehow. Sometimes as well I get the impression Indian culture is pretty compatible, some Latin American cultures, Japanese (but in a different way), North American in its own way (especially the 70s - am I imagining a tendency towards the pie in the face gags on TV during the 70s?). Sometimes the little I know of the French Revolution period makes me think there would have been some shameless food play going on then I'd be very curious if anyone has ever heard of anything alluded to in pre-modern, early modern history. Maybe something in the Greek comedy plays of Aristophanes or Chaucer's tales

Reminds me here's a clip I had wanted to share that I came across while watching HBO's Rome series. It's technically cow's blood in the story but irl it's probably colored corn syrup or something and she takes it beautifully

https://youtu.be/CszQBNgZr0s

I meant first female scene, there was a bloke who got pied in a movie at least as early as 1912.

To piggyback off a lot of what was posted, I would imagine WAM as fetish material probably developed mostly as film and photography became more prevalent in the 40's and 50's. Considering the social norms of the time, the sheer cost of equipment, and what I imagine would be an extremely niche audience, I doubt much was made during those early decades (at least as direct fetish material instead of regular slapstick gags). What was made was probably done to a very direct audience and I doubt very much of it exists at this point.

The true growth of WAM as a fetish really came when home video became more of a norm in households. It probably helped grow most fetish communities. Once most households had a VCR, it opened the floodgates for niche sex product because it could be watched in private.

I guess one way to "whittle" this topic down a little is first, who or what group coined the term " Wet and Messy"?

Esquire Magazine had articles & photos of mud wrestling in 1950's & also an article including sinking from a pre-war edition but I am fairly sure that muddy girls were sex symbols long before that

not oldest as you guys are talking about...but I remember seeing my first clip 1999 to 2000ish when I was still at school, trying to access WAM on the school internet!!! Might just have been still photos actually.

Always wondered who it was, was a girl fully dressed, trousers and boots I remember...may have been suit...being gunged on a double bed, covered in plastic. Gunge was green and very much like the BBC gunge...anyone remember it?

Just an addendum to my earlier post. GIFs, correctly credited. Anita Garvin sits on the pie and - to clarify - Dorothy Coburn is actually the other backside/face pie victim in 'Battle of the Century' (Thanks to SadBlue) Plus, Dorothy Coburn again in 'The Second Hundred Years' having her back side painted.

This is often unclear as it kind of evolved from various associations in the 80s through to the nineties.

Bill Shipton took part in a number of 'historical' discussions on the Splosh! forum. Although I can't find the one I remember, here are a couple of links. Some nice pics here and there, too!

http://www.sploshuk.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=3514&p=38975&hilit=ellison+carpenter#p38975

http://www.sploshuk.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=2126&p=23375&hilit=ellison+carpenter#p23375

This whole thread is my entire jam.

we started splatt on velocities in 1994, used a scanner with polaroids to add content.

That classic/silent 'sitting' (slipping and falling butt first) on a pie scene (Anita Garvin) must have been pretty outrageous (even scandalous) when it premiered...her reaction to landing on the pie is far from disgust or horror (what 'polite' folk might expect to see)...and more like embarrassed enjoyment (with a little tribute to Chaplin as she walks away). Crazy.

What if this dates back to a food fight from are the founding fathers?
Just only recorded by drawings

Or caveman drawings on the walls

WAM as a fetish term was first used by Rob Blaine in 1994 when he created the first chat forum on the old Newsgroups system, because Rob created the newsgroup Alt.Sex.Fetish.Wet.and.Messy. Prior to 1994 most folks used the British term "Sploshing" created by Bill Shipton in 1989 to describe the genre, so WAM was an American term for Sploshing, Even today there are still differences between the original terms and the later American terms for the same thing....i.e. the Brits mostly say "gunge" while Americans use the term "Slime".

But prior to Bill Shipton and Rob Blaine there were many earlier fetishists who enjoyed the same hobbies....i.e. 100 years ago Charlie Chaplin was notoriously known for operating a "casting couch" where he would strip potential starlets naked and plaster them with cream pies in order to get a part in his films.

But Bill Shipton and Rob Blaine formalized the wam community as it is today, and Messmaster created UMD 4 years later in 1998 because by 1998 the old Newsgroup Rob created was totally over run by spammers and UMD was the first safe place where folks could chat safely and not have to deal with spam.

MK