It must have been a golden time for independent Television and Radio stores like Jack Bartlett’s. Remote Control of your television, being able to turn the channel without getting up when no kids were in the room, it was almost a miracle. And mute commercials! Of course there might have been an issue with the…
Category: The Advertising
Nobody fixes anything anymore.
Another item from my dad’s old 1958 Jensen-Byrd catalog, supplier to hardware retailers all over the west. This is a set of the locking mechanisms for card tables (Playing cards was a big thing too) – Today’s card tables have cardboard surfaces that tend to warp, and these lock assemblies today are easily bent or…
Madison Avenue likes what it likes.
I don’t understand what the point of this Barbasol ad was, but the cartoon is cute and clever. What do you expect from Popular Mechanics? The lady at the nudist camp is concerned about the nosy cowhand thinking she has a shiny nose. Is he even aware that she HAS a nose? I use Barbasol,…
The Great American AWESOME
I normally only collect old book matches, but this matchbox from The Great American Food and Beverage Co. Conglomeration (A SoCal chain but they had expanded to Seattle’s Lake Union in the 80’s) – It has the, uh, grooviest? Uncle Sam mascot. He looks like something out of “Schoolhouse Rock”. It all started in LA,…
Sell Christmas cards, win a shotgun
When I was a kid, I earned money by selling Christmas cards, and in the spring, seed packets- I got my inventory from outfits like “Junior Sales Club” who advertised in comic books- this example is from a 1967 issue of Sad Sack*. As you see, if you sold a certain number of boxes of…
Don’t be in the dark about flashlights!
This is from a Jensen-Byrd Wholesale hardware catalog from 1951, that my dad had and referred to once in a blue moon. A huge hardback thing that Mr. Drucker would haul out if he didn’t have what you needed in stock. I imagine some guys would buy extra bulbs and lenses and extra D batteries,…
Santa is in a minefield
I never know what to get my wife for Christmas. They are pushing those fancy Pelotin exercise bikes on TV as a gift, with some inane zoomer taking 38 selfies before she even gets on the thing. I’m like, Really, I’m to get her an exercise machine for Christmas? I think not. No vacuum cleaners…
Wait until the other shoe drops
These “Ripple” shoes probably were fun and different to wear, and maybe changed a person’s gait in a positive way. Years later, say 1970 something, my sister had some oddly wedge shaped heels on her shoes branded “Get There” that made similar claims. I think that Ripple shoes were defeated by the same thing that…
MY BRAIN HURTS
I guess when your head hurts so bad that you can’t even stand the sight of a trademark stamp, you don’t care about side effects, but acetanilid will do a number on your kidneys and liver if you aren’t careful; it’s basically acetaminophen, and here comes the flu pandemic of 1917. Probably not a fun…
Soldiers of Soda
Back in the day, apparently you could get into the Saturday Matinee for what? A dollar? Thirty-Five cents? Nope! Just six 7-up bottle caps! You could probably find them in the alley behind Uncle Larry’s house, or ask your big brother who works in a diner! PLUS! A real guy from “Soldiers of Fortune” with…