Thursday, June 23, 2011

Triple O!

Here's my favorite funny old ad.

I first saw it in a 1952 Colliers magazine. Advertising appears to have been a whole different ballgame back then. As my brother-in-law once observed, advertisers (incredibly) seemed confident that they could get people to buy their product through reasoning and persuasion. Hence the 500-word essay about a woman who had to pawn her wedding ring in order to support herself after she was widowed. (An ad for life insurance, of course.) This Ennds ad isn't quite as wordy as the dramatic life insurance re-enactment, but there's still plenty here to digest. Mr. B. and I couldn't help wondering about the guy in the picture - is this poor slob married to someone who is made this snarly by his morning breath? Is she the stenographer (this was the 50s, after all) who's suffered through ten thousand too many stinky dictations? Has the doctor in the lower picture recently cut the cheese, and is he surreptitiously watching the nurse to see if Ennds really masks the odor? Never mind the copy - there's a whole little drama in every picture.

It's also fun to see ads for products that never really caught on. Canned hamburgers, anyone?
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3 comments:

  1. Mrs. PinkertonJune 25, 2011 at 10:12 PM

    I'd always wondered: what else is there besides breath odor and body odors (from the "whole" body)? Extra-sensory odors? Must be something the HRCs discovered. You can't sense them, but they're there.

    As for the meat ad: Canned hamburgers, no. But "Prem"? Yes. Except now it's Spam, Spork, or just plain No Name 'Luncheon Meat.' I think it comes from domesticated, free-range luncheons.

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  2. Mrs. BeazlyJuly 4, 2011 at 12:33 AM

    I think those "other" odors are related to what one calls "flatulence", in the usual manner of elegant females.

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  3. Mrs. PinkertonJuly 5, 2011 at 2:40 AM

    Oh, "projectile" odors.

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