11/12/14

Micro-Fluff! - What the flock?


Critical career opportunity update now from 1961! Become a flocker! Big-profit orders come from neighbors, gift shops, stores of all kinds. Why aren't you flocking right now?

Flocking is the process of applying a velvety texture to things. First apply glue, then apply the fibers, usually via a "flocking gun" which uses compressed air to spray the fibers onto the glue. Now that you know, you absolutely should have gotten in on the ground floor of the super-lucrative flocking boom, back in '61. Everybody wants their stuff to be velvety. Every neighborhood needs a flok-krafter. (Every advertiser needs a dictionary.) Decorate jewelry, department store display cases, windows! Windows?

See how lucrative? See this guy who is probably Nels Irwin? He's been lucratized for sure... probably with the help of a lucratizing gun.

Oddly, this same picture was used to market other decorating kits:


  • Asbestos-All
  • Spectra-Shit
  • Ants! Ants! Ants!
  • Wonderdump
  • Motherflocker
  • Super-Spume
  • Fecal-Luxe
  • Lung-Fuzz
Click for big.


CRITICAL SCUMBAG UPDATE! Alert reader Cyclotronboy has called me out, on my hideous failing to look into the fate of Nels Irwin. Usually, we'd do a "what ever happened to.." on a person, but today we dropped the ball. Apparently, Nels and a partner were sentenced to hard time in the slam, for mail fraud, in 1958...

According to the indictment each letter was mailed for the purpose of executing a scheme and artifice to obtain money by defrauding prospective purchasers of work-at-home mail order businesses. As charged in the indictment, the fraud was accomplished by omitting material facts and by making certain material representations which were false and known to be false, upon which representations the prospective purchasers were expected to rely.
On each of nine counts of which he was convicted (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 11), Irwin was sentenced to imprisonment for three years, to run concurrently. On each of the remaining seven counts of which he was convicted (Nos. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 21), sentence was suspended and he was placed on probation for four years, commencing at the termination of imprisonment. Kerns received concurrent nine-month sentences on each of the nine counts on which Irwin received three-year sentences. Kerns received a suspended sentence and probation, similar to that granted Irwin, on each of the remaining seven counts.

So, dear readers, we can safely assume that Nels spent some time in prison, probably getting butt-flocked. Boom! You didn't think I'd go south, but I sure did! Very south!




5 comments:

Jim D. said...

Ouch. I have used the Don-Jer stuff. They had a cheap version of the gun, which was basically two cardboard tubes that telescoped and blew the fuzz out a little hole in the end of the smaller can. I know, that's what she said, right? I used it to cover the insides of jewelry boxes with black suede-tex. Worked pretty slick, and the fuzz seemed to be too big to penetrate down to the alveoli. The real source of harm was the contact cement you first slathered onto the surface to be micro-fuzzed, suede-texed. I used black for my project, but back in the 90's there was an assortment of alarmingly fluorescent 80's colors, since crafters are usually at least 10 years behind. Thanks for stirring some fond memories of self-employment in an unheated cinderblock hovel on the outskirts of a small town in Georgia, Phil!

Jim D. said...

ps) wow, I just remembered something else! Where I work there's a planetarium. The walls below the dome are entirely flocked in black to deaden noise and because in the 60's when it was built, apparently there was no surface less reflective of light than black flocking. Our tech guy claims this flocking, which feels pricklier than Suede-Tex, was applied with a special electrostatic process that made all the spicules in the flocking stand straight out from the flocked surface. Wacky stuff, flocking. Surprising that fewer people didn't jump on the bandwagon. As cool as it is, you'd expect folks would . . . well, flock to it.

PhilAreGo@gmail.com said...

I find it hard to believe that you tried to make a career out of flocking, Jim. Are you still at it? Did you become the head of a multinational flocking empire? If so, hats off to you!

Also, thank you for giving me the word "spicules".I will use it at every opportunity.

[-Mgmt.]

cyclotronboy said...

A quick google search of Nels Irwin finds this: http://tinyurl.com/lqevsq8 which is probably the same "lucratized" man, convicted and sentenced in the same Los Angeles! Quite the entrepreneur!

PhilAreGo@gmail.com said...

Holy jeez! This is important to the post. I have failed, in my total lack of up-following on Nils. Post will be updated, stat! Thanks, CTB!

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