11/11/13

COTY Sell-Arium - Requisit-t-t-t-t-tes!

So you're a pharmacist (or if you're English, a "chemist") in 1940, and you want to make use of your counter space. Who you gonna call? COTY, for their Sell-Arium, muddafugga! Time to sell some beauty requisit-t-t-t-t-tes! Oh, man, you got to get on that shit, stat!


Since you're probably pretty normal, you don't call the stuff in your medicine cabinet "requisites" (pronounced "rek-wuh-ZEET"). Despite being generally more pressed for time than every major civilization that came before us, we call that stuff "all the stuff in the medicine cabinet". Why? because we don't want to get made fun of for sounding all fancy, that's why.

But when you're COTY (pronounced "koh-TEE", and yes, I looked it up), nothing's too fancy for you. In fact, in the makeup-and-selling-grand-foofery-to-ladies biz, fancy is money in the bank. The harder to pronounce your name is, and the weirder your normal-word-replacements are, the happier you are. If you're a lady, you probably know this.

"A fishy requisit-t-t-t-t-te!"
Know who else knows this? Michael Palin as the Not At All Naughty Chemist. For a reason nobody knows, he always said "requisite" with too many T's throughout this whole sketch. I don't need to understand why to understand it's funny. Skip to 2:23 in the video below, or watch the whole thing from the Five-Frog-Curse cartoon, or just click this link that starts at the right tome code.











Guess what was really popular to rub on your face in 1940? Legionnaire's disease! See? Know you know. You're welcome!













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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I find it fascinating that Coty uses almost identical packaging for their face powder (far left) today as they did 70 years ago. I guess a little Legionnaire's disease doesn't frighten women away when it means a matte, flawless complexion.

http://www.walmart.com/ip/Coty-Airspun-Translucent-Extra-Coverage-Loose-Face-Powder/10312547

Anonymous said...

Sempr*n* !!

Police ConstableHotBalls_2

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