Kelvinator Mediterranean Refrigerator - Business in front, party out back.

Hey redecorators! Do you need to replace your boring old bulbous fridge from the Eisenhower era? Have we got the upgrade for you! Go Mediterranean with the new Kelvinator. Sure, it looks classy on the outside, but inside it's all wild party time! Woo-woo! Look at that smart, sophisticated wood-grain refrigerator. What is this? The secret door to an hep classy sex dungeon? No, stupid! It's the refrigerator! Check it out, groovy!

Kelvinator borrowed the styling for their new refrigerators from The Mediterranean Sea, which is where Spain comes from! So, now you can have a fridge identical to the ones owned by dozens of everyone in the Mediterranean Sea. That's classy as crap! See how the handles are needlessly ornamental and overdone? That's how you know you're fancy! It's just a thing you pull on to open the door, but because you have so much culture and stuff, you can have curlicues and swirls all over it! Otherwise, people would think you're a tasteless loser, right?

See those beveled panels stamped into the door? Each one of those bevels was hand-carved into the metal dies by old-world artisans from Italy or wherever. Then, those dies were rammed into a sheet of steel, which had been printed with rich mahogany wood texture, just like Old World Fridgemakers used to do in the 1600s, probably while drinking wine and dying of syphilis.

See the lady's sash? That's how we know she's a Spaniard.

Sure you think it's all class and taste on the outside, but open it up. Brain explode! Movable shelves! Stuff on the doors! Gaaaaah! Ice-making robut! Cray-zeeee!

There. Now you are dead from crazy.

Crosley Appliances - The opiate of the masses.

Another berzerkfully happy ad now from Crosley, to brighten your morning, and possibly give you bad dreams. You're welcome!

"Holy shit, family! It's the new line of 1949 Crosley appliances! If I don't sprint on down to the Crosley dealer right away, ignoring all traffic laws, I'll kill myself! When I arrive, I will demand to be sold the entire line of Crosley products! I cannot believe how happy I am!

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Come, family! Let us gather in the driveway and have an unreasonably happy Crosley parade! Make no mention of Grandmother's hip! She must also march in the parade! My life without Crosley is a hollow, filthy lie!  Everyone must know how wonderful Crosley is! Sing! Sing of Crosley! Sing or I will destroy you myself!

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G-E Home Freezer - Freezing... at HOME!

Yep. As with all things that once were impossible, there was a time when freezing food was such a technological marvel that it was a family occasion. A regular food-freezing hootnanny. Good times, back in 1949.

But remember - in 1949 it was only1949. That was the year that somebody built NATO, some guys invented West Germany as well as the people's Republic of China. Also, Africa decided apartheid was a great idea. Hey! There's more! Britain recognized the independence of Ireland, putting an end to that whole rigmarole forever, right? Right? Right. Jeez. Maybe freezing some asparagus really was a kooky distraction?

"Even with all our 'spare-gus and brockly, and there's still

room for that hobo that daddy ran over!"

And with their wonderful new "home freezer", this family will have enough asparagus to keep their pee smelling weird all year long! Hm. "Home freezer." I wonder how long people used that term before just calling it a "freezer" became normal. When computers were new and exciting, people used to say "I'm getting a home computer" without meaning that the computer would be as big as their home. Now you just say "computer" if you're feeling relaxed and not particularly rushed. Mostly, you just say "PC", like you don't have time to sit around all day pronouncing things. Did anyone ever say "home television"? Probably not, because the TV pretty much debuted as a consumer device intended for the home. Did we ever say "home automobile" or "home bathtub"? I guess not.

But, the names of things definitely get shorter as they become more familiar, don't they? "Horseless carriage" becomes "automobile" which becomes "car". "Velocipede" becomes "bicycle" which is now "bike". "Pizza pie" became "pizza" which is now simply "food".

Here are some things that we can look forward to saying more quickly in the future...

-"Home cyclotron", as in "You can irradiate your wart in the 'tron, but until I'm done with the hair dryer. It always blows a breaker."

-"Home gas chromatograph", as in "I need to work tomorrow, I'd better decaffeinate my yogurt in the GC or I'll be up all night."

-"Positive displacement liposuction aspirator", as in "Are you done with the Dyson yet? Tad will be here in 20 minutes and I need to lose three pounds."

1958 Westinghouse Appliances - The shape of yesterday's tomorrow, this morning!

I think we live in sort of pessimistic times. When's the last time you heard anybody get excited about The Future? Or, what was the last ad you saw using "of tomorrow" in anything other than sarcastic tones? I mean, I like the future. That's where I keep all my best electronics. But then I'm a futurist nerd. My opinion doesn't count. In '58, lots of people were optimistic and super cranked about The Future. This is one reason I like 1958 so much.

The Images and Scanning Them dept had some trouble with today's two-page spread. The Saturday Evening Post didn't want to spread 'em very easily, and in keeping with our "do no harm" and "catch and release" policy on magazine husbandry, we chose not to "force the issue". (Heh heh. Good one, Phil man!)

These appliances are so sharp-edged you could shave with the refrigerator. Gone were the bulbous appliances with tail fins and chrome. Westinghouse was all about simple shapes and minimalism in '58. I'm inclined to agree with their design, but that doesn't mean I understand it. Why do we perpetually associate minimalism with The Future? Look around Ikea. Circles and squares, baby. The Future!

An early occurrence of a common Future shape: the squircle. This is an example of "prior art" that prevented Apple from patenting The Use Of The Squircle In a Portable Music Device. The Westinghouse washer-dryer combo unit was technically a PMD, since it A) wasn't bolted to the floor and B) made noises that were rhythmic, and therefore could be construed as music.

Decades later, the iPod's squircle-based design was regarded as "very clean", as was the compression algorithm used in the AAC file format preferred by Apple music listeners. However, this was not enough to allow Apple to patent the device as a washing machine.

Well, when we think of The Past, it's all swirlicues and filigree, right? Ornamentation for the sake of it. Look at the Vatican. What could be more "old world" than this mess? Who's going to dust all that stuff? Oh, that's right. You won't have to, because the rapture will be here any minute now to tear the world apart, starting in 1 A.D. I hope you brought something to read. (Any second now!)

As far as spiritual architecture goes, I kind of think the Buddhists have the right idea. Simplicity turns the mind inward and brings about the extinction of the self, or whatever. Whoever designed this joint (pictured) was definitely a material girl. No wonder it's all run by unmarried men who wear dresses and have a flair for the theatrical.

So, maybe it's no surprise that we have come to think of The Future as being geometric and clean. It works for me, at least. If I bought a house that had surviving appliances like these Westinghouses in place, I'd pray that they still work so I could keep them around, because they're so cool. It'd just be Allen Wrenchio, the God of Ikea that I prayed to for such modernist intervention.

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G.E. Americana - Fashionable for several minutes.

Barb loved her new kitchen. The colors were so very "now". The cherry cabinets matched nearly approximately the hue of the countertops, and her new G.E. Americana appliances, in trendy Goldenrod enamel, were the star of the show.

Her husband had pushed hard for the Arranged Bacon Patriot curtains, which Barb wasn't all that fond of, but he'd let her get the tile in Chewed Muselix Beige, so it was a fair trade.

Doug had made her the bookshelves, so she could keep all her recipes close to hand - everything from roast beef to braised beef, right where she needed it. Doug could build anything, so long as it could be made from 1x12 and involved no "tricky cutting".

She had continued her patriotic brown theme with that little revolutionary snare drum and the Crucified Liberty cabinet handles.

Yes, Barb was sure her kitchen would be the toast of Wood Vole Ave, and she would have a dinner party to celebrate. She knew just who to invite. She'd call Carol Brady, and Lieutenant Fish and that delightful Gabe Kotter.

Dormeyer Coffe Pot - Bean's chosen demise.

Advertising tends to stop working on you the more you think. Worse than thinking is asking questions. Questions are the kryptonite of the ad man. Do not ask questions. Just consume. This 1960 ad for Dormeyer small appliances is a harmless but classic example of the baffling proposals that ad men would like us to accept.

The mascot is a coffee bean, drinking a cup of coffee while explaining to us his dream of being roasted, crushed, boiled, drained, and drunk by humans. If the observer can accept the idea of an anthropomorphic bean, he or she should feel a certain sense of horror that this bean has such masochistic fantasies, not to mention cannibalistic habits. A creature this weird deserves a painful death in a lovely Silver-Smith aluminum chamber of doom.

Silver-Smith aluminum? Wait, what? I hope they're only using the word "silver" to describe the color of the metal. Otherwise, we have no choice but to conclude that Dormeyer's advertising company has nothing but contempt for the meaning of words.

Anyway, back to the dream of Bean Guy. In a past life, I worked at a place that animated some commercials. One of the spots we worked on was for Starkist Tuna. You know - the ones with Charlie the Tuna in them? Even as I drew stacks of drawings of Charlie, I couldn't help but be confused as to why his dream was to be killed, ground into pulp and eaten by humans. If he were to explain this to me, my reaction to Charlie would start with pity, but would turn to revulsion and, ultimately, the desire to help him achieve his goal, just to make him go away and stop creeping me out. It's easy to hate Charlie the Tuna. Ostensibly, it was a badge of honor to be selected by Starkist for such a fate. I refuse to believe that the fishes in the cans are enthusiastic about being there.

The design of the bean man is kind of horrible Too. the cleft in a coffee bean looks a lot like a butt... or something even more vulgar. Let the images come to you in time. You'll regret it. It looks like the guy started as a fabricated puppet of some kind. Look at his hand. It's a little fabric glove with wires inside to hold the pose. Strange. The red spot color makes it hard to tell what's what, but it looks like the hat, cup, face, and sash are all comped in later by an artist. That's an awful lot of work to breathe life into a misguided abomination like this Bean Guy.

Why not make the mascot a coffee pot, or a long-haul trucker, or a medical student studying for finals? These make more sense than a bean getting a pick-me-up by drinking himself. I think I know why. It's the ad man's fundamental contempt for all living things, real or imagined.

Westinghouse Roll-Out Washwell - Dish bin.

Sorry for the gap in posts. My brother selfishly chose to get married this weekend, ignoring the needs of the blog  completely. The P.A.G. staffers responsible for filling in for me have been sacked and made fun of. We are now reviewing applications for new backup snarky jerks, to prevent any further gaps in wiseass remarks about old pictures.

I sometimes wonder why more freezers and dishwashers aren't bin-shaped, like this Westinghouse Roll-Out Washwell dishwasher.

In the case of freezers, it would retain cold air much better, since cold air is heavier than warm air. Pulling out your freezer "drawer" wouldn't drop the temperature of the freezer by twenty degrees, like it does with a door on the front, which dumps it's cold air all over your feet when you go in for an ice cube. For dishwashers, it'd be much easier to seal against water leakage, I would think. The evidence is clear that they've pretty much got the door-type dishwashers figured out. I've never had one that dribbles water around the door seal, and that amazes me. Sometimes engineers figure things out without any help from me. The audacity.

Americans, despite their claims of loving freedom and, and creativity, are terrified of any new idea, and habitually retreat from any true innovation, to hide behind convention, where they can then continue professing their deep love of innovation from a position of safety. This dishwasher looks too much like a trash bin, and as such, would not sell well among open-minded Americans. Did it do well in 1950? Who knows? But, you don't see many designs like this any more, and sealing a huge door on the front of the machine is way harder than a simple bin shape with a sealed lid. There's got to be some reason we do things the hard way.

That kid's pretty funny, poking the waste disposal to see if it's hot or something. Time to make fun of him.

Joke #1 - "Well, lady, I'm not sure what's causing your problem. The motor's still good. the seals haven't failed, and the wiring checks out. Whatever the trouble is, I think it's something to do with girls, which are icky. Three hundred seventy five dollars, please."

Joke #2 - "Hooray! Daddy says I'm just like him now! It didn't hurt, and I got to have ice cream! My 'fore-skin' is in there."

Joke #3 - When he misbehaved, Timmy was placed in the cabinet under the sink, where he listened to his friend, the disposal, grumbling away about nice things like revenge..."

Joke #4 - "When I grow up, I want to be a Westinghouse Waste-Away Food Waste Disposer. Daddy says I'm going to be a choreographer if it kills me. Mommy wants a divorce."

Joke #5, from Sue! - Little Johnny spent the evening looking for the peas he saw Daddy shove in the disposal. If he could only find the goods on the old man....

Norge Appliances - The home front.

Advertising is a foul and hateful business filled with reprehensible scumbags that you wouldn't want to have a beer with. That's a given. During World War 2, the advertising industry was faced with a problem they couldn't scumbag their way out of. How do you advertise your product when the total company's production has been nobly converted to producing gun turrets instead of, say, refrigerators? Hmm...

Ding! Problem solved! Use the old "soft sell".

Sure, people those looking at this ad, decades down the road, who've never seen a world war, and who've never lived through food rationing, simply wouldn't understand. The audience of sixty years in the future was not their audience. America was terrified of being invaded, and even worse, it seemed possible.

So how do you sell appliances in 1943 that you're not selling in 1943? Show them what you are selling. "Do you want a frikkin GUN TURRET in your kitchen? DO YOU? Because THAT'S what we're making here at Norge, people! For shooting Germans and Japanese and maybe some Italians! No? No gun turrets for you? Then SHUT THE HELL UP about your wobbly old fridge for a few years, for chrissakes! Thank you. Come again."

There is a thing in advertising called "the soft sell" - a sales technique characterized by indirect persuasion and subtlety. Talking rather than shouting. This ad is a glowing example of the soft sell, the cleverest and most intelligent of all human pursuits. Here's why...

1. Although Norge would like you to keep them in mind for your next refrigerator purchase, there is no refrigerator actually shown in the ad. Indirect, see?

2. The barrels of the gun aren't actually pointing at the civilian couple. If you look carefully, the sights are pointed up and to the left (from the soldier's point of view) of the couple. They are in no real danger from the gun turret they are apparently horrified to find that they installed in their kitchen. The danger is implied. Subtle, see?

3. The fruit in the bowl consists of a banana and two oranges, possibly tomatoes (Yes, tomatoes are fruit. Shut up.). This implies the shape of the male penis, which is recalled in the gun barrels, which are longer than they are wide, you'll notice. Also notice how the woman looks frightened and the man has more of a "I don't believe how aroused I am by this gun turret I've found in my fridge nook!" look on his face. All ads have sexual undertones. This makes men want Norge appliances.Clever, see?

4. The man is cowering behind his wife. His right hand is desperately clutching her arm, holding her in front of him, hoping that her body will stop the slugs and save his life. Also, the woman has thrown her arms protectively across her man. This implies the strength of American women, who helped out with the war effort and made victory possible. Feminism in the ad helps to suck up to women, who, let's face it, do all the work in the kitchen and as such, will be the deciding factor in the appliance purchase. Progressive, see?

5. The man and woman are huge. Since the gun turret is nearly the height of a refrigerator (note the height of the nook in the cabinets), and the couple are looking downward at the soldier, they must be in the neighborhood of nine or ten feet tall! Norwegian people are famously tall. This shows Norge's solidarity with Norway during it's continuous occupation by the Germans throughout WWII. Also, Norwegians are horny. See point number C about sex and stuff.

Can-O-Matic - Don't ask why.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't see these around much any more. Nope. I just checked. It is just me. You can still buy them. Nope. It's not just me. I never see them on my friends' kitchen counters.

We had one of these things when I was "wee". As it is with so many things during kidhood (Tang, vacuum tubes, ketchup), I didn't question it. But now that I'm a big huge man, I can call into question the necessity of an electric can opener by going "double you, tee eff?", as I like to say, in Verbose Text Speak.

In 1961, middle America was delirious with it's own greatness. We had defeated Jerry, and put a man on the moo... (no wait. That was seven years later.) We had put a man on the television in the form of Jack Parr. And to put a Dairy Queen swirl of soft serve on top of that meat loaf of achievement, we then turned our considerable will on the humble kitchen, and found it lacking. "Let us" we intoned, "create a doohickey that shall", we said, raising our hand to the sky, "through the vigor of electromechanical automation", a single tear of righteousness rolling down our cheek, "open up a can of tomato soup." A thunder thingy happened and some majestic sunlight or something came down and made drama.

What I remember of my mom trying to get this thing to work was... well, my mom trying to get this thing to work. The opener wouldn't get a firm grip on the can, or the cutter wouldn't bite into the lid, or the can wouldn't rotate when the machine tried to rotate it. If my mom swore, she would have sworn at this thing.

The worst part about opening a can with a manual opener is the fact that the lid becomes a weapon with an edge as sharp as one molecule. This, I would think, is the problem that needed addressing with any automated solution, but nope. Electric can openers were a veritable production line of DIY shiruken, ready to cut the world in half if you drop it edgewise on the floor. If you were designing an electric opener, job one should be that it somehow rolls the edge of the lid, so that your Veg-All is relatively free of arterial spray when you feed it to your family. The age of Aids was still a decade or two away, and people in the sixties could still savor the risk-free richness of human blood, but it was, even then, kind of gross. The one job that an electric can opener handles for the weary chef are those horrible ten seconds of crank turning. I think this is a solution no one asked for.

Also, these devices became another six pound lump taking up space on your counter top, even if you did find them useful. It'd fit nicely between your electric food chewer and your electric sponge squeezer. The electric salt shaker hole-clearer-outer could stay in the cabinet except on special occasions.

Wait a second. It has a three-position bracket? Forget everything I said. My days as a lousy two-position bracket owner are over. I have to have one of these, pronto.

Kelvinator - Hybrid Species

For a long time (I'm going to say 1950's -1960's), it was pretty fashionable to use photographs in print ads, but to "plus them up" with some airbrushing - either lightly or rather heavily. In this ad from Kelvinator we see a strange array of airbrushing, from mostly-photo-with-light-airbrushing, to completely cartoony.

The topmost picture is only lightly retouched, but if you look really closely at her face, her eyebrows are pretty seriously drawn in... like with a sharpie. The woman in the middle picture is a kind of middle ground, as if they started with a photo and then had the artist paint over her completely. Cute eyes though. At the bottom we see Wilma Flintstone a cartoon of a woman completely made up. She could have been drawn by Hanna-Barbera. When I look at her, I imagine her being voiced by June Foray.

Here's a perspective goof they missed. Look at the floor area of the bottom picture (even though there is no floor in it). The fridge's front and back feet are even with each other, as if the camera is lying on the floor. Now look at the woman's feet. The front foot is lower than the back foot, as if the camera is at waist height. The perspectives don't match. Maybe she's stepping down off a little footstool that wasn't painted in, along with the unpainted floor? This is a pretty minor fumble, but it makes me feel like a big man to point it out. There. Now I am a big man. That would explain the difference in floor height.

The tile in the top picture is very anachronistic. That tile may have been in fashion in 1961, the year this ad was published, but I associate that green-with-white-smears tile with basements and gas station bathrooms. Now that I picture this tile in my head, I also see it chipping away in spots, revealing salmon-colored tile underneath, with the chippy green crumbly bits sliding around under my feet as I wonder if I've just contracted dysintery from the sink.

Wait a second. Those aren't coffee pots in these pictures. They're hukka pipes! What goes on? Now I know the truth behind her smile. Look at her. That's a "please don't tell on me" smile. It looks like people really knew how to start the day right, back  in '61!

Servel Refrigerator - Ice is H.O.T.!

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking that the idea of using sex as a sales motivator is super new. We just thought of it a few days ago, in a lab, and the shrink wrap has just come off of it. Brace yourself.... INCORRECT!

Behold! The Servel Electric Refrigerator with Automatic Ice Maker! Who? I know what you mean. I'd never heard of them either. Well, they're still around, it seems, filling that nice market for propane refrigerators. What? I know what you mean. Apparently early fridges were gas powered, and worked via evaporation. Fire heats ammonia which circulates throughout the unit and then evaporates and goes to the bottom for more heating. Weird, huh? That explains why Servel was excited enough about electricity to put a badge in the fridge bragging about it. It's there in the picture, below her boobs.

So yeah, boobs. Look at this ad! Then please make a growling cat sort of noise to yourself, because that's clearly what the designers of this ad had in mind. She's getting ice cubes... for two! She's in her nightie, and wearing makeup. There's only a couple of reasons a woman would be dressed for bed with makeup on. She's not getting ready for a Playboy shoot.  She doesn't look like she's in a photo studio (even though she is). She's in her kitchen, and it's bizness time! And it kind of looks the photographer is the lucky fella. Either that or she's one hell of an actress. Look at those eyes. I guess the implication is that, if you're getting ready to "make the sexy", you don't want to fumble around with ice cube trays.

This ad looks funny because it's part of a two page spread. Here's the other page.

Nothing super funny here... just Junior at the start of a habit that will have him undergoing bariatric surgery when he's thirty. What a lovable little scamp. Stealing cake.






This window AC unit is great. It looks like a drawer. Great job disguising the thing, guys. It looks like a perfectly ordinary window drawer.
 "Nice window drawer, Gordon." "Thanks, Chuck! It makes me feel like I've captured the world and stuck it in my drawer as punishment for being so very naughty." "Uh huh. I gotta go, Gordon!"


It looks like a filing cabinet got caught breaking into their house.

Lastly, the logo is great. It's cool enough to put on a supercar. There's a free font out there that's pretty similar to this, called Dragonwick.

Presto Toaster Oven - Well Done

In another life, I think I could have been really happy as an industrial designer. "We need a toothbrush holder. Design one that looks good." That sounds like a decent way to spend my day. The trouble is, as with most creative efforts, that there's always a committee of visually illiterate drones who have to all agree on your design. That's how good ideas get mangled. This 1968 toaster oven from Presto made my eyebrows go up. I think it looks pretty cool.
A toaster oven is hard to get excited about. You just want it to work and not look like an ugly lump on your kitchen counter. This one is an artful collection of a few simple rectangles that manage to look elegant and light. The can opener / knife sharpener is pretty great, too.

We are currently in the design era of biomorphic shapes. Nobody wants to admit that consumer products are basically made of rectangles. The guts of the device are rectilinear in nature, but then they're wrapped in a plastic shell that is desperately trying to look swoopy and curvy, concealing the shapes inside. This doesn't work. This "rectangle shame" results in a product that, to me, looks forced, awkward, and embarrassed of it's true nature.

Here are some examples of current toaster ovens that a quick google search showed me.

All of these designs started with a rectangle or shoebox shape. They then had blobby shapes stuck on them to make them seem... I dunno, organic? It's like the head of the design house threatens to fire anyone who puts a straight line on anything. Straight lines are efficient and simple. These examples are overcomplicated things that look more congealed than designed. Biomorphic designs can be done well, of course, but we rarely see good examples. There must be some. Why is it so hard to think of any? Frogs? Swans? Parameciums? Those are all good shapes, but I don't want to cook my breakfast in any of them.