Mallory Hats - Make like a reporter and get one.

This ad from Collier's magazine seems like nothing much, until your eyes get to the bottom. Mallory chose, as their serving suggestion, a reporter! This is the kind of exciting life you could lead if only you had the right hat: the Mallory Starlite!

Hats are kind of an anachronism. They're generally only worn by old men whose fashion sense is carried over from their youth. Yes, there is a bit of a resurgence in popularity among urban hipsters, but hats are, not to put too fine a point on it, finished. I don't wear one unless it's a knit hat for winter or some kind of hilarious thing worn just long enough for a joke to come off well.

As a mere peripheral hat owner (ranging from "fishing" to "fez"), I believe the one in the picture is a fedora. Cue the hat pedants to correct my hat ignorance with indignant fury.

So, this ad seems to tell us that if only we had a Mallory Starlite, we could own a tie, and maybe one day dream of being some kind of reporter. Just think of it, asking a tearful woman how it feels to have her husband burn down, and could she please repeat that because you couldn't quite make that out, what with all her blubbering, ma'am. These kinds of insightful questions are made insightfuler from under the 360-degree soffit of a Mallory Starlite.

Also, there's this nice instructional drawing demonstrating the proper hat-feeling method. See? This is how you feel a hat. Now you try. There. Now you have felt the difference in a Mallory.

Either the man is a reporter, or he's writing something on his notepad that's so interesting it simply must be filmed. Like, maybe he's drawing a really good flip book of how he thinks the crime was committed? "See, the guy was blocking the door and so the robber was all 'pkow pkow pkowww! ans the blood went 'bluueehhh' all over the sidewalk." Yeah, probably a reporter. An animation hat is totally different.