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!

Click for big.

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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Ivory Flakes - 'Scuse me while I kiss the sky.

Today's ad may look familiar-ish, to the obsessive PAG! reader with an encyclopedic knowledge of all our posts. You know who you are, and please stop leaving notes on my kitchen window. You're freaking my shit right out.

You may think that the subject of our curiosity is the sedated lady in the flowered dress, who is so special that she must wear gloves just to touch her own pristine bosom, to keep it nice.

Nope. She just looks stuck up and no-fun-to-talk-to. But holy smokes, look at those hips! No, wait. Those aren't her hips. Those are horizontal stabilizers, to give her greater maneuverability at high speeds. I assume her engines are smug-powered. She can use her stabilizers to go visit the space lady down below.

The real attraction here is this lady, sitting on her tuffet, admiring her stocking, floating through a planetary nebula while two stars go nova just a few feet away, completely discharging their quanta. Good thing she's looking the other way. She might be slightly blinded and vaporized.

When I first saw this ad, I thought we had already used it, it looked so familiar. But nope, it's just a different ad from the same year, with what looks like the same model, wearing different night clothes. However, she is no less enchanted by her stocking than her other self from our previous post.

She can't believe her frikkin eyes. That's one hell of a stocking. She almost dares not touch it, but it's so radiant, she cannot resist. Not like that other stupid stocking she left on the floor. What a piece of crap that thing is. She should throw that floor stocking into one of those supernovas. But she should take care to use some salad tongs so she doesn't burn herself. Supernovas are fairly radiant too, just like her finest cottons.

Plugmold - A fantasy of wires.

It looks like Plugmold was (UPDATE: "...IS a system...")a system of electrical conduit mounted on the surface of your walls that allowed you to have an outlet every 30 inches or so. I'm all in favor or that. However, in their product shot, Plugmold have shown us a glimpse into the beautiful fantasy world in which you have   electrical stuff on all your walls with the cords proudly displayed dangling down to your brilliant new Plugmold system. Whee.

I had a hard time deciphering the joke in the little scenario. Were we supposed to be impressed that you could use a soldering iron within feet of a baby's crib? In the end, I figured out that this woman's house was so electrically optimized, thanks to Plugmold, that an electronics shop had moved into her baby's room. Oh, those Plugmold jokers. What shenanigans they get up to!

Plugmold. Dare to dream.

Yeah, that's great and all, but look at that overposed lady, doing the standard 1950's "aghast and surprised" reaction. She's good enough to react to almost anything. If only someone would cut her out of her ad so she can find new employment being horrified at all sorts of things. Wedding invitations, phone bills, death certificates. She can improve just about anything with her permanent state of dainty horror (see below).

Here, let me get that for you. Scared fifties lady on transparent background. Big and small versions. Get your rude finger ready to right click her into your heart in three, two, one...

Big version.

Less big version.

Click for big.

Magnavox True High-Fidelity - Life in the rainbow.

Back in Yore, what we call a "stereo" was called a "Hi-Fi". That's because equipment capable of accurate tonal reproduction was kind of a new idea, having been introduced to the audio market in the Fifties, to distinguish snooty products that try to sound good from cheapo products that satisfy themselves with just trying to make sound.

Do we even call our audio setup a "stereo" anymore? It seems we're overdue to replace the term with something else, since stereo audio isn't exactly front page news any more. What's the new term? "Music thing"? "Audio system"? That sounds a bit douchey. Consider the P.A.G. staff on watch to identify the new word for whatever people use to listen to music... whenever they're not listening to it on crappy ear buds or crappier computer speakers.

Anyway, Magnavox promises you will live in a "rainbow of music". Where do the people in the picture live? Judging by the weather and vegetation, it kid of looks like one of the pinkish-violet regions of Planet Purple.

I hope the rapturous couple is either heading out or just came back from a gala dinner. They didn't get all dressed up just to listen to their Magnavox Brittany while staring out at the blue fog, did they? Who knows? I guess that's life inside the rainbow. Are jobs easy to find there? It looks like the real estate market is doing pretty well in the rainbow, so whatever Mr. Overposed does for a living, it must be paying pretty well.

The car's running. Are you guys coming or what?

So how do you photograph a fantasy in the days before Photoshop's blur filters? Lots of Vaseline on the lens. But you can't just smear it everywhere. You have to smush it around artistically, so you don't obscure the talent or product. The P.A.G. Image Analysis Squadron has detected the areas of the picture effected by the magical Vaseline smudge, which we now present to you for your interest:

So how much did Mr. and Mrs. Overposed pay for their Magnavox? $650 in 1957 dollars is the modern equivalent of $4975.70! Holy jeez! There isn't enough Vaseline in the world to make that look good.

Big one is in here.

Daystrom Furniture - Like, tubular.

So that's who made those chromed steel and aluminum kitchen sets with tubular legs. Daystrom. This stuff has been tarred and feathered with the stigma of lameness so that it's hard - even for me - to like it. But I still find a way. Shocking, huh?
In crime-type TV shows, the investigators generally track down an accomplice to his trailer home with three flat tires. I promise you that when the agents the startled perp will be in his kitchenette cooking a spoonful of crack, sitting at a daystrom dinette set. This is nice, because when you're strung out on drugs and hiding from johnny law, you don't have the time or energy to clean your furniture. That's where Daystrom's easy-to-care-for line of Masland Duran bright vinyl upholstery comes in.

The jpeg here is displaying really crapfully, but I promise that the file is much cleaner than it looks. If you don't believe me, go on and click through it. I'll wait right here.

There. Don't you feel like jerk now?

A quick search reveals that Daystrom still exists, but the vast majority of the images that pop up show their older stuff. This either means that they still make things like this, or the company was known for their modern designs and is now known for being mostly unknown. I suspect that Daystrom was mod in the fifties and sixties, groovy in the seventies, cocaine-y the eighties and anonymous in the present. It's just a feeling I get.

They do have a website, but as is so often the case, they're owned by a larger company called LADD, and it's furniture is marketed under the names American Drew, American of Martinsville, Barclay, Clayton Marcus, Design Horizons, Kenbridge, Lea, Pennsylvania House and Pilliod. I think I get it: the party's over. Here's a sad little statistic: Daystrom is alleged to currently employ 1-4 employees, according to this business profile.

One little ray of interestingness is that LADD is one of the biggest suppliers of institutional furniture to hotels, hospitals, and stuff. I've always wanted to find old furniture from a hospital or hotel super cheap at an auction or something. One hundred and six years ago, when I lived in California, I found four chairs from a doctor's waiting room at a thrift store, which found their way into my living room. I wish I'd brought them back with me.

Blah blah blah. yeah, whatever. Look how happy the lady is with her chair! The photographer caught her in a candid moment having a waltz with her beloved chair. "Wheeeee! Chair! I love chair! Tra-la- ha-ha-haaaa!" Man, that's great. She has a special relationship with chair and she doesn't care who knows it. File her under "overposed".

Old Gold - Overposed.

Here we see Old Gold cigarettes being pushed as "safer" than other cigarettes. This is like getting crushed by the smallest piano in town. But we're not going to poke fun at the ridiculous claims of cigarette companies (although I will point out that back in 1952, the truth in advertising laws were even more useless than they are now, and Old Gold was not required to even mention what study supported their bullshit claims). Nope. Today we're taking the high road and making fun of the overposed model.

Presumably, this super dramatic picture is meant to resemble the "you may now kiss the bride" part of a wedding. Your heart is supposed to melt, imagining what it would be like to kiss this lovely woman who has just dedicated her life to you, whose mouth smells like a trash fire.

Think of all you'd have to look forward to, waking up as her husband on a fresh September day, with the trees just turning orange, smelling her first smoke of the day drifting up the stairs from the living room, soaking it's reek into the carpet and all your clothes. Maybe you'd make some toast, listening to her hack up a half pound of phlegm into the bathroom sink while just starting in on her second smoke of the day. At least you'd have lots of time together in a few decades, while trying to figure out how you'd pay for her lung surgery, which would buy her a few more years, ultimately leaving you with crippling debt after her early funeral and futile cancer treatments. If things go well, maybe only one of your kids would have diminished lung capacity and asthma.

There's just one thing to make her picture prettier...

 Aah. There we go. A lifetime of pleasure.

Ivory Flakes - I hope it's a stocking.

The Ivory soap company is the hero of overposed models. Once again, they bring us an ad with a woman trapped in balletic reverie.

The woman in the top picture isn't being especially weird. She's just exploring pictures of plants, choosing which one to capture and add to her Skirt of Dead Plants. "Soon I will have THIS plant on my skirt also, and then I will have all the plants in the land, to wear on my Skirt of dead Plants! Except for that funny weed I saw behind the AM-PM Mini-Mart. I must have that one, too! It shall be mine. Curse your security cameras, AM-PM Mini-Mart!"

No, the subject of our derision today is the blissed-out woman being entranced by her stocking. She had to stop, partially dressed, hypnotized by the glory of her perfectly laundered stocking.

Notice that she's dressing on a lighted stage, where living approaches the unreal... for those who think and feel. I hope Rush isn't waiting for her to trigger the smoke machine or anything. With such finely washed undergarments, it could be hours before she snaps out of it. The irony of her working on the stage crew for Rush is that she is clearly not in touch with some reality beyond the gilded cage. Her brain is miles away.

I'm assuming that's a stocking she's holding. It's wrong of me to assume that. She could simply be a reptile-lady marveling at her first molting. "Such a lovely thing is my former skin. What magic brings this feeling of a lower leg, fresh and renewed? How dare I have so many skins, each more tender and smooth than the last? I stand humbled, O nature, O circle of life. I thank you for my molted skin."

Or, maybe she's getting dreamy over one of her husband's enormous condoms? Nah. I prefer the lizard story.

Actually, back in 1951, when this ad ran, seeing a woman in such a state of undress was pretty racy - not much different than the pinups of the time. It would have been a trouser-moistening event, should any man of the time have picked up this copy of McCalls and found the picture, in some vulnerable state."Damn hell, Kent! Lookit her! Why, she's wearing nothing more than several layers of fabric! She's practically nearly nude, in a way! I, uuh, I need to go comb my hair!"

She looks so happy, all spaced out like that. She's definitely getting on with the fascination, the real relation. The underlying theme. The real relation. The underlyyy-ing theeeeeeeme! I wish I still made mix CD's. She'd be perfect cover art for a collection of live Rush tunes, since the picture looks so much like the cover of Exit... Stage Left. The trouble with using live tracks in a mix tape/CD is, you hear the crowd noise changing as one track transitions to another. Fix THAT, ivory flakes!

Modess - Why?

I need to keep an eye out for more old copies of McCall's magazine. That's where yesterday's soap ad came from, and on the very opposite page of the same magazine we find this fantastic ad for Modess. What does Modess make? I can't tell. Maybe they make sedatives? Or slightly oversized marble busts of King Louis the Sometheenth? I dunno. This ad is going for the soft sell, which in this case means spacey and weird.

"Modess... because." Ooooo, I get it. See, wealth and opulence make children out of reasonable, intelligent people. Notice that, when a person achieves a level of richness, their justification for their disgusting self-indulgence reverts to that of a third grader. "Why?" "Because." "Because why?" "Because. That's why." You just say it more slowly, and with an effete air of detachment, when you've just spent twice a normal adult's monthly salary on (I think) a dress. Just for that annoying rich asshole flair, you could also do that little gesture with your hand that people always use when they say "...a certain je nais sais fluh."

Wait! Wait! Hold the phone! I just did a thing where you ask Google what the hell something is, and you're not going to believe this. Modess was a brand of SANITARY NAPKIN! BAH hah hah hah! That dress could hide a lot of napkins.

Well done, Modess. That's an ad campaign so great that one would never guess what they're selling without being told! Money well spent.

Well, that kind of shuts down the rest of this post. I was having fun going on a tear about annoying rich people, but now I just look a little silly. I'll leave a note to have the editorial staff delete paragraph number two. They need the exercise. They spend most of their time turning my "teh"'s into "the"'s. A nice juicy deletion will do them good. Maybe if I just fill up the post with some jokes I can take an early lunch? Okay, need some jokes. The picture looks like a magazine cover. Let's go with that.

Joke #1 - Alternative Lifestyle Monthly. In this issue - Marble Marriage: Overcoming anti-statuism.

Joke #2 - Rich Asshole Magazine. This month: Are you assholey enough? Take our quiz and find out! Also, ten more insults in Spanish to use on the help. The solution to last month's crossword: all the answers are "money".

Joke #3 - Bored Heiress and Debutante Illustrated. This issue: the statue, the chair, or the flowers? Which to lazily caress first? The answer may surprise you! Also this month: Three new prissy lawn games: Raquet Prance, Hedge Maze Meander, and Knicker Knocks. Croquet is SO last century!

Joke #4 - Elite Elocution Quarterly. This issue: "Grand" or "mahvelous". Which sounds snootier?

Joke #5 - Illnesses of the Rich and Delicate. This month: "the vapors", the daintiest summertime fever! Also: Hot or not? Hair failure, consumption, lumbago, dropsy, many more to try!

Ivory Snow - Overposed.

It has become clear to me that general interest magazines of yesterpast are decent, but magazines that focus on men's or women's interests are brilliant. When advertisers try ever so hard to portray a fantasy of hairy machoness or, in this case, delirious femininity, you're in for a good time.

Ivory Snow soap, 1951. Whether she's doing laundry or just about to put on a string of pearls, the woman of 1951 likes to get spacey, dreaming about cleaning, being clean, cleaning again while dreaming about how great it was being clean the first time she cleaned a minute or two ago.

The only shot in this ad that seems even a little natural is the one with the baby in it. That's probably because babies are resistant to holding a balletic fairy-like pose for more than a second or two at a time. More on that picture later.

"I often like to sit at my hovering glass table, with pearls poised above my creamy white neck, staring off into the formless blue void. What? You've never been to blue? Oh, I positively adore living in the formless blue. My address is Pantone 534c, you know. Sometimes my darling husband and I talk of moving to another area of the void, but after so many years at 534c, I couldn't imagine living in any other color. Excuse me, I need to resume staring off with poised pearls, all the while daydreaming of mountains of snowy white soap flakes. Bye now!"

"Oh! There you are again! Hello again! You caught me doing my other favorite thing: pausing endlessly while apparently hanging laundry for my loving family, while staring off into the formless blue void You know, it may seem strange to have the washing machine in the back yard, but that's one of the great joys of life in the formless blue void. One place is much like the next, even to the extent that the word "place" ceases to have any meaning. That, and indescribably wonderful Ivory Snow! Must run now! Lots of creepy staring to do. Do drop by again!"

Here's a P.A.G. first. Goofy Photoshopping for no good reason. The baby picture was begging to be messed with. Fire would have been a little predictable. X rays seem funnier today.

Catalina Fabrics - Overposed and underexposed.

Today witnesses the first of a new category on Phil Are Go!... overposed photographs. I think I see enough of these to call it an idiom of the mid century. Photographers and art directors put their models in poses that we would call corny or silly. It doesn't look very realistic, and rather than sending us into teh store waving our wallets, we just laugh and turn the page.

Today's picture comes from Holiday magazine - the lifestyle journal of the privileged, moneyed and useless. Its pages are filled with ads for Chris Craft yachts, expensive whiskey and resorts around the world.

Pacific fabrics made swimsuits. Maybe they still do. I don't care enough to check today, partially because time is a little short. I won't make fun of the old fashioned modesty of the swimsuits apart from saying they're too modest. They look like they're wearing lampshades. I dunno. Maybe pacific also made lampshades?

No, the reason we're here is to laugh at the little girl. Nobody has ever stood like this unless they were told to by an art director or a choreographer. She's overposed.

No little girl points the toes and flips her arm out like a songbird, as if she's exploring a delightful wonderland, animated for her by Disney.

"Oh look mummy. Some of the little villagers are fishing for their supper. How darling!" "Yes, sweetums, and your daddy's mercury extraction plant is just across the water there. It's the reason you'll never work a day in your life, and the reason all the villagers are having flipper babies. Isn't that cute of them?"

I have some more overposed ads in the stockpile, so look forward to seeing these pop up from time to time. Or don't, but they'll still be popping up. Isn't that darling of them?