6/2/15

Barbasol - Like shooting decoys.

Telling people they'll never laid again. Is there any surer way to make a sale? This Barbasol ad thinks "nope!". It also has a nice martini girl and a weird saying.

This ad ran in the January 1943 issue of LIFE, which means it was on sale in December, because the magazine business is weird. I have never understood that.

Anyhoo, if you don't shave with Barbasol, no women will mash their face into yours. A strong motivation, as any red-blooded guy will tell you that face mashing is the gateway drug to other, even more delightful mashings. Ask your doctor if various mashings are right for you.

Barbasol makes shaving so easy, it's "like shooting decoys." Was that something people used to say? The P.A.G! Research and Googling Squad says that searching on that phrase just brings up a bunch of links about actual duck decoys. No mention of aphorisms implying easyness. Maybe Barbasol was trying to start a trend?

The other odd thing about the copy in this ad is that George feels the need to explain that he's George, even though the woman in the opening paragraph is addressing someone named George about his shaving. I think we would have figured out that George is George without it being spelled out for us. Give us some credit, advertising. We aren't all as dumb as you want us to be. The tiny girl in the martini glass never said "My name's Millie, and I'm tiny!", but one paragraph later, when George mentions taking Millie's advice, we know who she is. It's implied by context. Millie is George's seven inch tall love interest, and he hopes to impress her with the smoothness of his face, as sampled by mashing it against her wee little face, with the hopes of exploring parts beyond her face as potential mashing candidates. This now leads us to questions about relative scale regarding their various parts beyond. Poor George. He better not screw it up with Millie. How many seven inch women can there be?

Here's Millie as a handy clip art. Use her for a flyer or party invitation. Just don't tell everyone you're banging a seven inch tall woman. Let them assume your martinis are just four feet in diameter. Right click Millie in just the right spot and give her a home in your hard drive. With a girl like Millie, can there be any wrong click? You're welcome.





Click for big.


1 comments:

Unknown said...

Who's Millie? Nellie (Millie), even at 7", must have as many square inches of skin to shave as George, but we are to assume that she is smart and not gauche and already knows about the superior mashing potentials of Barbasol shaving, unlike dumb George who shaves in a tuxedo with a cig in his mouth? I'm not buying the 4 foot martini glass, so I'll have to assume that George himself is not much over 8.5" tall, so where do they get dollhouse scale Barbasol and blades?

Post a Comment