June 2018
June 30, 2018
Push-Button Toothpaste
Toothpaste in a shaving-cream can.
Colorado Springs Gazette - Nov 24, 1972
Posted By: Alex - Sat Jun 30, 2018 -
Comments (4)
Category: Products, 1970s, Teeth
Follies of the Madmen #372
Sentient cigarette fulfills its duties as matchmaker, despite dying an excruciating fiery death.
Original ad here.
Posted By: Paul - Sat Jun 30, 2018 -
Comments (3)
Category: Anthropomorphism, Business, Advertising, Tobacco and Smoking, 1930s
June 29, 2018
Marybel - the doll that gets well
Introduced in 1959 by the Alexander Doll Co. You could break her bones or give her measles, then nurse her back to health.
via Theriaults
"I need crutches and I must wear a cast 'cause I broke my leg riding pony too fast."
"I broke my arm when I stumbled and fell. Now I wear a cast to make it well."
Cincinnati Enquirer - Oct 21, 1959
Posted By: Alex - Fri Jun 29, 2018 -
Comments (6)
Category: Toys, 1950s
Artwork Khrushchev Probably Would Not Have Liked 14
Wood Gaylor, "Rites of Spring"
Posted By: Paul - Fri Jun 29, 2018 -
Comments (4)
Category: Art, 1910s, Russia
June 28, 2018
Vend-a-Joke
In 1971, Ussery Industries debuted a vending machine that for 10 cents would play a joke by Henny Youngman as well as dispense a candy bar.Sample jokes: "My mother-in-law got a mud pack. For two days she looked nice. Then the mud fell off."
"Let me tell you about my brother-in-law. I wish he would go to trade school so I would know what kind of work he is out of. He tells people he's a diamond cutter; mows the lawn at Yankee Stadium."
The vend-a-joke machine apparently didn't do very well. But two years later Youngman was featured on one of the first dial-a-joke lines in New York City, and that did much better.
The Odessa American - Jan 28, 1971
Posted By: Alex - Thu Jun 28, 2018 -
Comments (3)
Category: 1970s, Jokes
Truck Turner
The Wikipedia page.
Posted By: Paul - Thu Jun 28, 2018 -
Comments (2)
Category: Crime, Death, Destruction, Detectives, Private Eyes and Other Investigators, Excess, Overkill, Hyperbole and Too Much Is Not Enough, Movies, Exploitation and Grindhouse, 1970s
June 27, 2018
Opposed cream in coffee
The French scholar Arsene Thiebaud de Berneaud liked his coffee black. So much so that he "opposed with ferocity the then comparatively new custom of adding milk or cream to black coffee.""He seems to have had an obsession that all mixtures of fluids were injurious... Sustained by this preconceived notion, he was able to publish a long diatribe in 1826, in which he accuses cafe au lait of causing almost every derangement known to medicine."
I've been able to find almost no other information about de Berneaud, so this one odd theory seems to be the most enduring thing he left behind.
The Chatham Press - July 15, 1922
Posted By: Alex - Wed Jun 27, 2018 -
Comments (5)
Category: Health, Weird Theory, Coffee and other Legal Stimulants, Nineteenth Century
Miss Garter Throw of 1958
I can't find much on this beauty contest, nor any indication it was more than a one-time thing in 1958.
Source of foto.
Posted By: Paul - Wed Jun 27, 2018 -
Comments (1)
Category: Beauty, Ugliness and Other Aesthetic Issues, Contests, Races and Other Competitions, 1950s, Legs
June 26, 2018
A quarter pounder, hold the cheese
Cynthia Kissner and Leonard Werner have filed a class-action lawsuit against McDonald's, complaining that the cost of a Quarter Pounder without cheese is the same as it with cheese.As people who like their Quarter Pounders without cheese, they feel ripped off and are asking for $5 million in damages.
Read their complaint here.
More info here.
Posted By: Alex - Tue Jun 26, 2018 -
Comments (4)
Category: Lawsuits, Junk Food
Mystery Illustration 73
What was this pleasant little old lady famous for?
The answer is here.
And after the jump.
More in extended >>
Posted By: Paul - Tue Jun 26, 2018 -
Comments (3)
Category: Women, Nineteenth Century, Twentieth Century
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| Alex Boese Alex is the creator and curator of the Museum of Hoaxes. He's also the author of various weird, non-fiction books such as Elephants on Acid. Paul Di Filippo Paul has been paid to put weird ideas into fictional form for over thirty years, in his career as a noted science fiction writer. He has recently begun blogging on many curious topics with three fellow writers at The Inferior 4+1. Chuck Shepherd Chuck is the purveyor of News of the Weird, the syndicated column which for decades has set the gold-standard for reporting on oddities and the bizarre. Our banner was drawn by the legendary underground cartoonist Rick Altergott. Contact Us |
