Not our religion.

Old Gold - Just make it stop.

Dad used to relax with a cigarette. In fact, he probably relaxed maybe twenty-five times per day. What this Old Gold ad is ignoring is how un-relaxing his relaxation may be for anyone else in the house who doesn't enjoy the smell.

When dad would light up (which was more often than the times in which he wasn't lighting up), I'd shut my bedroom door and stuff a t-shirt in the gap underneath it, in a pathetic and futile attempt to keep the stink out of my room. The sitnk seemed even more intense on a bright saturday morning when it was the first sensation to wake me up, instead of, say, the smell of eggs and toast. Good times.

So, in this ad, the boy is practicing his violin in the family room? Couldn't he go practice in his bedroom? Or, maybe he's putting on a little recital for his dad? Or, maybe this family lives in a single-room yurt? That was big among LIFE's readership in 1945, right? Lots of middle-American yurtdwellers? Too many unanswered questions, man.

Anyway, you may, in the last few days, just want this shit to stop. Changing the profile pic on your FaceTube account isn't going to make that happen, but sometimes nothing will. Not in the near term, at least. But it may give your friends a laugh, though.

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Maybe you identify with the boy, whose early attempts at music went unappreciated by your parents? Hey, at least they rented him the violin, right? That's not nothing.

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And there's mom, too. She doesn't have a strong role in this little tableau, probably because this is 1945. (Well, the ad is from 1945. This is not currently the year 1945. We still live in The Future, but this shit is just getting started, so you never know.) But whatever. Here's the tolerant and dutiful mom and wife who, for some reason, loves both of these narcissistic jerks.

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Have a smoke. Do whatever gets you through the night. It's alright. It's alright.

Nescafe - Nestle makes the ver-ree best. Cof-feee.

Hey, sleepeies! Got a cuppa joe in front of you right now? Is it dehyrdated coffee? Probably not. Speaking of "dehydrated" and "probably not"... Nescafe!!!

How's the free coffee your work puts out? It's free. It's fine. Right? When's the last time you tried dehydrated coffee? Was it actually gross, or did you just make a face to avoid ridicule?

All coffee is boiled roasted bean juice extract. On its own, its flavor falls somewhere on the "bitter and gross" spectrum. Most people throw in a flavorant of some kind to make it taste okay. Still, many people consider themselves connoisseurs, despite the fact that they can't tolerate the stuff without sweetener.

FaceTube is well populated with videos of people doing blind taste tests of coffee and getting their answers sort of right and sort of wrong. A decent one is this one from Facts, an Irish channel whose videos always feature people who are funny, charming, and intolerant of bullshit, which fits with my lifelong stereotype of all people of Ireland. When the day comes that I meet an Irish person that's a pretentious poser, I'll adjust the stereotype.

The most likely truth is that people's appreciation of coffee is directly proportional to how much money they believe was spent on it.

Years ago (like, 18 years ago), when I worked at a cartoon studio, I used to occasionally indulge in International Foods' Fancy Mostly Sugar Blends of Wildly Overpriced Instant Coffe Powder. You know the ones. They come in those little square tins, designed so carefully to look like they were stolen from the breakfast bar of a fine hotel in Cicily? Remembering that (in America, at least), the ingredients on food packaging are listed in order of quantity, it's worth noting that ingredient number one on the list is sugar, followed by creamer, followed by a bunch of other things. Coffee eventually makes an appearance at ingredient number nine. Once I realized that the stuff was mostly sweetener, I moved on to regular coffee with normal sweetener in it.

Important Information

Ingredients

Sugar, Nondairy Creamer [Corn Syrup Solids, Partially Hydrogenated Coconut Oil, Sodium Caseinate (From Milk), Dipotassium Phosphate, Mono- and Diglycerides, Artificial Flavor], Instant Coffee, less than 2 Percent of Natural and Artificial Flavor, Sodium.

In defense of Nescafe, their ingredients are coffee. Not horrible if you don't want to make it the old fashioned way, but coffee is so cheap and quickly available for purchase at business every eighteen inches along your daily commute, why would you bother with coffee that's been stomped on by Mr. Wizard to such an extent? I know, this is an example of both the Naturalistic fallacy and the Argument form Ignorance fallacy. There's no real reason instant coffee has to be horrible.










Me? Folgers with a sploosh of milk and half a fake sugar packet. Just enough to dull the bitter so I can get it down. I'm working my way towards being able to drink it black, so I can punish myself for not getting enough sleep. Baby steps, man.

So anyway, the guy ambassador in this ad is pretty funny. Wouldn't you want him in your hard drive, for quick deployment as your avatar in whatever chat service you use to spew snobbish hyperbole about the quality of your premium boiled bean juice that you dumped two ounces of sweetened creamer into? I thought so. You're welcome! PS: No one on your chat service needs to know what the ambassador is drinking.

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Seagram's V.O. - The Supermarket of the Future!

Ever wonder what was up in 1945? Well on September 2nd, a crazy misunderstanding called Double-You Double-You Eye-Eye stopped happening, and everybody was all "No Way! Really? GTFO." Twenty-four hours later, this issue of LIFE magazine hit the shelves, and Seagram's was already planning our bright, efficient future. They didn't waste any time, did they?

Behold, the Supermarket of the Future, as envisioned by a whisky manufacturer. It's good to know how we're all buying food now, isn't it?

The shiny and efficient future we all enjoy today was foreseen in nearly every sharp detail by the wizards at Seagram's. How did they know?

We've come a long way, baby. Thank god the Greatest Generation was there in '45 to ensure this glowing future of wisdom and freedom, which they themselves could not possibly have fully envisioned, no matter how much Seagram's V.O. they drank.

If you simply must see more shining visions of our victorious retail dream of modernity, you can probably find more than you can deal with over at PeopleOfWalmart. Seagram's has got you covered if you feel the need for a drink afterward, which is more than likely.

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What is wrong?

Pages lifted directly from How Do We Know?, a disappointingly sensible and worthwhile children's book from 1945, mostly about animals and the natural world. On the cover, two splendid children can be seen feeding a squirrel rare earth magnets, so that he may survive the winter stuck to the side of a dumpster, and once again caper and frolic, come spring.

After spending 27 pages teaching kids about animals, there comes a horrific two-page quiz. These images are unmolested, and exactly as they appear in the book.

"What is wrong?" "What is wrong?" What's wrong is that they didn't even tell them the names of these monstrosities.

Little Ads - Magic compound cartooning.

Throughout World War II, all robot sailors were kept water tight with the help of Stay-Tite caulking compound. Further naval gains were made thanks to our whimsical spelling of the word "tite" at the battle of Midway. Ironically, the very robots protected by Stay-Tite products insisted that the spelling of "tite" did not compute.

Magic, apparently in liquid form, was the source of the wartime fad of wearing a loved one's face on random articles of clothing. Few innovative customers realized the same enchanted liquid could be used to print articles of clothing on your face.

The cartooning population suffered heavy losses in 1945 after many talented hopefuls misinterpreted the illustration in this ad. Many pens were rammed into many brains.

Marfak - Know your lube.

Urgent news now, from 1945. Lubricant advertiser uses baffling image to sell lubricant!

The P.A.G! Imagery and Usage team has been unable to determine the importance of being on a swing with a steering wheel. One thing's for sure, we're tired of being disappointed when beating our grease with a hammer. Those of our readers trapped in 1945 are urged to use Marfak in all their hammer machines and when lubing their automobile's chassis, stat!

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Me? A real Electronician? Golly!

You there! Sitting on your chair! I choose this moment to interrupt you mid-sit by bringing you news of the greatest career-getting opportunity of the day! Yes, you yourself can become a RADIO-ELECTRONICIAN and start earning the increased money you probably deserve.
Simply place your pointing-device over the image above and actuate the click-button to recieve, free-of-charge, a larger version of the advert-tisement to read at YOUR convenience!

After beginning your new career in radio-elctronicianizing, you will surely desire additional careers, all of which can be taught to you by me, F.L. Sprayberry. Choose from such amazing vocations as...

Auto-Car Fix-O-nician
Aero-Plane Repairalizer
Dog Docto-trician
Cat Docto-trician
Vole Docto-trician
Tele-Vision Techno-Repairgrapher
Bicycleographer
Shoe Cobble-O-tron
Space-Rocket Build-O-trician
Chicken Wrangle-ician
Book-Word Writealizer
Police-Man Officerator
Clothes-Dryer Fixant
Bull Teaser