Italian Swiss Colony - Duck for Corky.

Today we feature a 1950 ad for the Italian Swiss Colony, which you may remember from their funny but sad post card. But today's ad is from Look magazine - not a mail-order commercial on daytime TV inbetween The Banana Splits and Squiddly Diddly, which is how I remember the "Itswico" as we used to call it.

There's a philosophy in advertising that all you have to do is get people to remember your ad. Anything else is irrelevant. This is often done with a picture, since humans evolved to dedicate a huge part of their brain to vision. The premise is that "You'll never miss with Italian Swiss". See? It Rhymes. That means you'll remember the name, too. And so, from all of this, we get cork dolls hunting ducks... presumably while drinking.

I'd imagine that a cork doll would have poor enough aim with a tiny shotgun, even while sober. Then add the element of delicious appropriate-for-any-occasion Italian Swiss Colony wine, and poor Corky's bringing home jack squat for the dinner table. Pity too, because one duck looks like it could feed a pair of cork dolls for most of the winter.

It's uncommon for wives to accompany their husbands on hunting trips, but there's Mrs. Corky, egging him on. "It's right there. Just shoot the thing, and we can go home!". Poor drunk Corky. Is there nowhere he can go to escape the nagging of the Missus?

Even if he did manage to bring down a duck with his tiny shotgun pellets and even if he did manage to drag it out of the water (which is probably where it'd fall), how would he get it home? He looks about twelve inches tall. Assuming he has a car built to his scale, the duck would have to go on the roof like the dead grandma in Vacation, instead of the hood, like a dead deer. That'd be like a human pulling a baby elephant onto the roof of his station wagon. Itswico wine must give you the strength of a hundred cork dolls. Now that's a slogan that would make me buy wine.

This ad reminds me of my Mom's neighbor - a guy a few years younger than myself, and a few feet wider than myself. He's a veterinarian and a duck hunter, which seems really bizarre at first. Then I thought about it. He probably just handles dogs and cats at his practice. He uses his two dumb-as-bricks dogs to hunt ducks. This guy really loves dogs and REALLY hates birds. Pity the poor parrot owner who brings their little buddy in for a wing trim. "Ma'am, your parrot is badly in need of being shot, temporarily fed to my dog, gutted, stuffed, and stuck on my wall. He'll be right as rain within two weeks. That'll be three hundred dollars. I try not to make eye contact when I see him out in his yard. A recreational hunter would have a tiny bit of my respect if he could march, unarmed and naked, into the woods and come out with a dead animal... even a rabbit. It should be a level playing field. Hiding in ambush wearing camouflage clothes, shooting at animals with a gun you did not design or build and probably could not repair. Well, that's just being a bully.