Follies of the Mad Men #2

[From The Saturday Evening Post for December 16, 1967]

Whenever you put a giant woman in a skirt next to normal-sized people, the inevitable first thought engendered in the viewer is, "Can I see up her dress?" In this instance, the second thought is: "Is she going to pick up that car and use it as a marital aid?"

Posted By: Paul - Sat Jul 12, 2008 - Comments (10)
Category: Business, Advertising, Giant People in Ads, Products, Fashion, Obsessions, Fetishes, Sexuality, Cars

Plastic Pink Flamingo Shortage imminent!

Crude oil heading toward $200.00 a barrel? Trivial! More important here at WU Central is the upcoming dearth of avian lawn ornaments as the company that makes them goes bankrupt!

Read the whole sad story here.

How will extortionate charities get their money now, if the practice of "flamingoing" is doomed?

Posted By: Paul - Thu Jul 10, 2008 - Comments (10)
Category: Animals, Business, Products, Customs, Domestic, Inventions

Obama Lincoln

Check out this new portrait from famed painter Ron English, and read what happened in Boston when it was recently displayed.

Posted By: Paul - Wed Jul 09, 2008 - Comments (3)
Category: Art, Business, Advertising, Government, Officials, History, Historical Figure, Politics

Foo Kin Chinese Food

My pal Pete Kaplan stumbled across this one. Who knew that up in Cooperstown, NY, they had such pronounced Liverpudlian accents?

Posted By: Paul - Wed Jul 09, 2008 - Comments (7)
Category: Business, Advertising, Food, Restaurants, Weird Names

Selling Ice to Eskimos

Darren McEwen alerted me to this photograph (from 1943) currently featured in National Geographic's Flashback section. He notes that it looks like a guy trying to sell a refrigerator to eskimos. Actually, the women are Bolivian cholitas, not eskimos. The caption explains:



If you want a real picture of a guy selling ice to eskimos, here's legendary pr stuntster Jim Moran in 1938, bundled in furs up in Alaska with an icebox, trying to make the aphorism a reality. (Photo from Mark Borkowski's Improperganda.)

Moran's most infamous stunt was when he tried to tie midgets to kites and fly them over Central Park. His idea was that the midgets would carry billboards on which he would sell advertising space. When the police told him he wasn't allowed to do it, he remarked, "It's a sad day for American capitalism when a man can't fly a midget on a kite over Central Park."

Posted By: Alex - Tue Jul 08, 2008 - Comments (0)
Category: Business, Advertising

More Muscles than Brains

When I first saw the ad for this device in the pages of Scientific American, I thought it was a joke. But it's true. For only 1.5 times the price of a 2008 Hyundai Accent--a whopping $14,615--you can buy a machine that does everything you can do with a jump rope, two cinder blocks, the branch of a tree and a bicycle tire inner tube.

If you can't wait to purchase it, visit Fast Exercise now.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Jul 07, 2008 - Comments (1)
Category: Business, Products, Inventions, Medicine, Sports, Technology

Follies of the Mad Men #1

Madison Avenue! Home to brilliant, canny advertising geniuses, who can convince millions of people to buy or believe anything! And then again, even Homer nodded.

Yes, it's true. Back in 1962, some genius of a press agent thought the image of the National Rifle Association could be improved by creating a cartoon spokesman who would offer rhymed messages about not accidentally offing your friends.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Jul 07, 2008 - Comments (2)
Category: Business, Advertising, Guns, NGOs