Bullshit Ideas of Yesteryear

For those of us who enjoy looking at old ads, there is a limitless supply at Google Books. Get rich quick schemes, cigarettes, cars, food, underwear, leg warmers, bomb shelters, it's all there. Just pick a year and a magazine title and peruse your workday away.

I found this column of lies in a vintage Popular Science classified section, just after the full-page ad of the guy leaning on his Rolls Royce, promising to help you make $100,000 in 90 days.

Locals Only: Let the Air Duct Cleaner Wars Begin!

It's Springtime! And that means quite a lot to the free magazine publishers who fill their pages with atrocious ads designed in-house by landscapers, pool cleaners, driveway resurfacers and these guys, the people who clean your air ducts so you don't die from allergens in your home's atmosphere. The following three ads were only pages apart from one another in the same issue of some sad rag that I only bothered to skim through to find bloggable material.

Companies A and B, below, both opted for the "Don't Let Your Little Girl Suffer" route, with toddlers in misery because their Mommys and Daddys don't care about them. The first attempts to do the "green" thing, adding the recycle symbol to the upper left. For what purpose is anyone's guess. I think they lose points for not explaining that, throwing it in as a stupid hook that might fool someone. Price point difference is only $1, so it's your call as to which little girl makes you feel the guiltiest. (Click images for larger.)

But Company C, below, is the winner for me. Not only is their price $3 less than the cheapest one above, but they are also "Organic"! Needless to say, their choice of imagery is far superior, going the "Nuclear Fallout at a Post-Apocalyptic Family Dinner" route.

Smooth as a Baby's...Wait a Minute

Click ad for bigness.
If this is test #43, I'd be curious to see the previous 42 and any subsequent tests. The babies seem not to mind having their butts rubbed on the face of a freshly shaved man, nor does the man appear to mind the baby butts on his face. This is just too weird. All in a day's work for the lab-coated scientists of the Schick Shave Lab.

I'm a disposable razor guy (sorry, Brits, I'm American - we're wasteful) and have found that Schick is in fact the only brand that won't leave me bloodied (thanks for nothing, Gillette). But I've been using the apparently old-school and now outdated "Xtreme 3" (with Triple Blade Closeness™.) Man, and I thought that razor was the end-all. This new one, the Quattro™, is obviously much better, as Quattro means 4, which is 1 more than 3.

(Scanned from yet another gratuitously self-referencing and filled with Hippie Nostalgia™ edition of Rolling Stone [July 2007], celebrating what they considered the Peak of Human History™, the Summer of 1967™, or the Summer of Love™, the same year the magazine was founded. RS even went so far as to create a 9-page list of The 40 Essential Albums™ of 1967. Gimme a break. There were actually that many albums released in '67 worth noting? Highly doubtful.)

Squirrels ARE Useful

Click for bigness.














See also Thinking in Vain's squirrel catapult find.