Neighbors and Helpers - Camping.

Good news, wonderers. The Phil are GO! Garage Sale Assault Squad has made the critical acquisition of the 1936 school book "Neighbors and Helpers". It's not a first edition, which may be the reason that a child felt free to scribble all over the pages. Observe the vivid green fabric cover with lively brown and beige silk screening.

We haven't even opened the book yet and already we're learning. The cover illustration teaches animals how to go into the forest to feed the wild children that grow there, in a feral state. One of the children is so feral that she doesn't wear shoes and goes about wearing only a toga. One feral boy wears overalls like a savage. So feral!

In today's story, Joe and his nameless father, named "Father" are seen walking in a park near a city, possibly called "The City". Father is so relaxed that he only feels the need to wear one of his jackets, since it is a warm summer day.

Joe expresses some interest in sleeping under a tree, as well as some awareness that there are people called "Indians". This is fairly progressive material for 1939. This may be the only copy of Neighbors and Friends to escape the bonfire.

Joe's interest in tree-sleeping results in an eventual camping trip. In this illustration, we learn that, when camping, it is acceptable to dress informally. Father is wearing a camping tie and a camping fedora. Joe is wearing his special red camping tie, as well as the hat he usually reserves for occasions in which he addresses people as "mug".

In the chapter "Making Camp", the critical question is "What did father do to make camp?". In short order, we discover that one makes camp by making an "Indian" do it for you. The Indian is as nameless as Father, but also is not allowed to speak or be spoken to. There is no explanation how the Indian got here from India. There is also no mention of "Mother".

At one point, Joe and Father see a bear. Father knows enough to instruct his son to freeze. One wonders what would have been his advice had the bear chosen to investigate further, instead of running off.

After the encounter, it may have been viewed as a fine time to teach Joe how to keep their food supply from attracting bears to their camp site, and thereby prevent an untidy disemboweling. But apparently, you'd have to be an Indian to know that. Maybe Father also brought his anti-bear tie on this trip?

At the end of the story, there is more labor for the Indian, and we finally discover the existence of Mother! Joe expresses some hope that next summer, Mother can go camping with him and father, but this would involve her being allowed to leave the house. Maybe next year?

Gane Air Flow Needle - Possibly does a thing!

Automotive news now, from 1950. Get ready to holy shit yourself, motorists! Some people who use a thing report different gas mileage than other people!

Miracle mileage extenders are still made today, and why not? We're still making dopey people, aren't we? They need an outlet for their dopeyness. Here's Jalopnik's list of ten of the worst bogus mileage boosting products still sold today.

The Gane Air Flow Needle is supposed to improve your gas mileage. I haven't tested one, but it has all the earmarks of bogusness. Plus, there's the likelihood that, if this doohickey did what it claims, the cars would be engineered with one already. The auto industry is competitive, and as such, employes really smart engineers who are always looking for an edge over their competition. cars are pretty much tuned to the limits of technology and production budgets. if a two dollar screw-in needle could boost mileage 25%, it would be in there.

Note that nowhere in this ad does it make a promise of actual performance. It uses the lawyer-safe phrases of "up to 25%" and "some users report". These statements are not falsifiable or meaningful in any real way. Know what number technically falls within the description of "up to 25%"? Zero does. Users may actually report improved mileage. They may also report that their neighbor is a lizard alien. Wording like this sounds like actual evidence, but it doesn't actually mean anything. Language like this is still the gold standard for B.S. gimmicks. Look for them on your favorite UHF rerun of the day!

But hey, let's not overlook the implicit bigotry of the art in this ad. Did you spot it? That's right! It's one of our favorite nearly-obsolete bigotries, the old "Scots are stingy" prejudice, as previously reported here and here. See the letters at the top of the ad? the ones that say "SAVE GAS?"? They're not painted plaid on accident. Someone went to the trouble of simulating a tartan pattern in those letters because, as every racist old-world cracker from 1950 can tell you, Scottish people are cheap, so they would be interested in saving money on gas. Clever, right?

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This ad also had a little flippy overleaf thing with some decent clip art of a man pointing at us. He's very compelling, even if his hand is strangely undersized. Be careful what you allow him to make you do! Better yet, point him at other people to make them do things.

"You there. Yes, you! Don't notice my freakishly tiny hand, but click for my bigness."

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Country Gentleman. March, 1930. Page 127. Girl's Life!

So, apparently, Country Gentleman magazine had a column called Girl's Life, waaaay back in 1930. This sends the eyebrows up, as it's surprisingly gratifying to hear of mainstream culture concerning itself with girls, or their having a life of any kind. I guess American society wasn't made up of backward troglodytes in 1930 after all.

Herein is reproduced for your amusement the entire March, 1930 Girl's Life page, which includes fashion news, a household tip, and another promotion for the "jazzy uke" girls could earn, just for selling nine years' worth of Country Gentleman magazine. Not kidding.

And while we're exploring good old page 127, please enjoy these impressive fashion illustrations. At the time, they were depictions of the latest trends, but whattya know? Sit on it for eighty-four years and the drawings become pretty nice period pieces. Funny how time works, isn't it? Here they are, all cleaned up and clip arty, for your doing whatever the heck you want with them. Who says we don't post stuff for the ladies? Click through them for the larger versions, as usual.

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It's a lazy- bangle-dangling afternoon in

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And what goes on here? The word "togs" used in 1930? News to me. I always thought it was kind of a 60's California thing, but apparently not. The word seems to have come from an obsolete term "togeman", which comes from an even older word "toga", which you may have heard before.

Also not to be missed, but possibly definitely to be missed, is the racist little "dinah doll" made from an ink bottle on the top shelf of the bookcase. We won't run an enlargement of that. You can find that for yourself, if that's what you're into. You're not welcome!

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Hires Root Beer - Scotchphobia!

Racism news now, from 1937! Hires Root Beer hates the Scottish and wants them all to die of cancer!

How can that stupid sentence be true? It can't, stupid. However, there's plenty of bigotry to be had in this Hires Root Beer ad. The ad suggests that, because Hires was 5¢ a bottle, the Scottish would love it. Fuck you, marketing douchebags! We've reported hard-hittingly in the past on the myth that the Scottish are cheap. News flash: everybody's cheap. But for some reason, you didn't see angry crowds of Scots flipping over police cars and going all Braveheart over the stereotype. Maybe because they had better things to do, like going all Braveheart over their age-old grudge against the English.

So Root Beer is good for you? What's the deal with that? Well, apparently Pharmacist Charles Hires was the first to commercially market Root Beer in 1876. Before then, root beer was made and drunk at home, mostly in North America, where it was believed to be a cure-all. Then again, everything was believed to be a cure-all by the ignorant savages of 1876.

The key ingredient in root beer was an extract of the root or bark of the sassafras tree. This "original recipe" root beer was mildly alcoholic, but since Hires was a dry guy, his formula was just sodey-pop. Funny thing: it was also highly carcinogenic. Why was that? Sassafras oil was determined to be a carcinogen by the FDA in 1960, which is why all commercial root beer since then is artificially flavored. Don't go looking for "natural" root beer. Or, if you do, be glad you can't find any. Actual root-juice-type root beer is very decidedly non-good for you.

So now, the only reason root beer is bad for you is plain old sugar, which is slightly higher in root beer than in cola... or if you just get run over by the delivery truck. Know what? Back in 1876, they believed getting run over by a root beer delivery truck was a cure-all. If you think of it in a certain way, it kind of is.

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Virginia Gentleman Whiskey - *Cough* Smooooooth.

From the 1959 pages of Esquire Magazine, the publication of rich, young, white douches comes this ad for Virginia Gentleman Whiskey, which is distilled and bottled in Fairfax County, Virginia.... by redcoats?

I could be wrong, but aren't those British officers in that illustration? Britishness, of course, doesn't preclude these two from the halls of gentility, but it's just confusing, is all. "A most historic American Bourbon". Maybe the man who owns the plantation is extending the "invitation to taste" to the British soldiers as a peace offering? Maybe he's trying to suck up to the colonial British by having his (apparent) slave deliver the whiskey to them, as a demonstration that he and they were sympatico? I wouldn't care if I had a dram of VJ in my belly, that's certain.

The chronology of a small brand like Virginia Gentleman is not thoroughly documented on the web. All I could find was a current review of Virginia Gentleman, and guess what? The label's different! See?

Somewhere between 1959 and today, we had the whole Civil Rights Movement, and apparently they heard about that, even in Virginia. So, a new image was called for. Strange that the painting they chose was, again, so English. What is it with these guys? I've never really tried whiskey, apart from those times around Christmas time, back in my days working at a cartoon studio. This one guy would bring in a bottle of whiskey and "add a little Irish" to our coffee, upon request. The boss was cool with it and treated us as grownups and as a result, no fights broke out and nobody got fired or anything. Our bellies warmed with coffee and firewater, we'd go back to animating cartoons for children, on through the dark Chicago winter. I've never had whiskey straight, though. Maybe I'll look into it. One drink and I'll wonder what I was wondering about, I'm sure. Not 'till after five, Phil.

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1949 Mercury - Thrrrrifty, lad!

This 1949 ad from Mercury is thrilled to tell us about the fuel economy of their first postwar model. It's "thrifty" as a... who is that on the left? Hey, it's a racial stereotype helping Mercury to sell cars!

Okay, the '49 Mercury weighed about 3700 pounds, and managed to squeeze a little over 100 horsepower from its V8 engine. That's pretty unimpressive to our future-ears. That's about as much power as a Honda Civic. An average SUV weighs about a thousand pounds more than this Mercury, has at least twice the power, and has a mileage rating somewhere in the low teens. So, current cars embarrass the old cars in terms of power, weigh a lot more, and don't really get much better mileage. You'd think we'd have made more progress in fuel economy, but electronics are really heavy. So is safety equipment, like airbags. Almost any modern car is probably way better in a crash than this pretty old Merc'.

Where were we? Oh yeah. Thrifty. What's with the beardy guy with the scarf? That's a Scotsman. You may not have heard this before, but Scottish people are supposed to be cheap. Like any stereotype, it can't be universally true. It was actually hard to find any evidence of exactly how it got started. If I had to guess, it probably began during a particularly bad time in Scottish history when things were tough and Scotland suffered economic troubles.

However, we found lots of examples of the stereotype. Investopedia surprisingly embraces the stereotype saying that "The Scottish have long been famed for their frugality and practicality." That's a positive spin on a negative stereotype. Investopedia also offers no citations for the stereotype.

Studebaker actually had a line of cars called the Scotsman, so named for their affordability and practicality.

Monty Python wrote a sketch about a Scottish poet called Ewan Mcteagle, author of such poems as  the brilliantly allegorical "What's 20 Quid to the Bloody Midland Bank?" It's interesting to note that as the sketch starts, as soon as the Narrator (John Cleese) introduces McTeagle (Terry Jones) as the author of "Lend us a Quid", it gets an immediate laugh from the audience. They seem familiar with the stereotype. This gives us no answers, but a Python sketch is always good enough to go out on.

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Utica Sleepers - Ai ai ai! Muchol racismo!

The Forties were a different time. Super-square honkies got to walk around like they owned the place, ignoring the existence of people who looked or thought or philosophised differently than they did. It's the world that some people miss dearly. It was a time when you could use racial stereotypes as advertising and no one would notice. Simple times. Behold! Utica "Bodygard" sleepers with jolly jumping bean designs in "gay mexicolors", from 1949. Please try to remember in the future that, pink, blue, yellow, peach, and green
apparently qualify as "mexicolors".

 I guess the whole "jumping bean" thing is because kids in footy pajamas are adorable or whatever and their parents call them jumping beans. Or something?

 The jolly jumping bean family comes from "down Mexico way". How did this phrase get started? You never hear people say "I'm just in for the holidays. I came from up Boston way." They only say this about Mexico. The only place I know the line from is the Sinatra song "South of the Border". Turns out this song is from a 1941 film called, oddly enough, "Down Mexico Way".

I became aware of the song in the Simpsons episode Kamp Krusty, in which Krusty the Klown takes the campers to "the happiest place on Earth - Tijuana!" after things go to the dogs at his officially licensed summer camp. Then a Sinatra sound-alike begins crooning  Down Mexico Way over the closing credits. I like the song. Very catchy, but listeners should be warned it has a few kinda stereotypey things at the end ("ai ai ai", etc.)

So, are we to believe that, down Mexico way, the kids there wear PJs with fun little pictures of white people on them, walking around with briefcases, seething with marital strife over meatloaf dinners and getting divorced and dying of congestive heart failure at the age of 45? Would that be any less insulting than a family of Mexicans portrayed as living beans?

I think the only real outrage about these pajamas is that they taught children of the Fifties that elephants are indigenous to Mexico (see image below). What kind of madhouse nightmare world are they trying to create? Just to avoid embarrassing myself, I checked to see if there is some weirdo species of Mexican elephant that I hadn't heard about, and nope, there isn't. But, I did find a great line of informative text on the Wikipedia page, though. get ready for education, people!

"The word "elephant" has its origins in the Greek ἐλέφας, meaning "ivory" or "elephant"

There is another other outrage, I now realize I can type "wikipedia" twice as fast as I can type "Mexico"

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Rice Krispies - Snap, Crackle, and Popgun

Here’s something we don’t see any more: overtly aggressive wartime ads. In 1943, it was all about the war effort. WWII wasn’t an ambiguous war, or one that was hard to sell to the American public. Hitler was a guy who was very clear about wanting to take over the world. This made it very safe for advertisers to depict their mascots as angry killers.

Here, we see Snap, Crackle, and Pop with rifles, tearing across the water in a shore craft, ready to fight for the American way of breakfast. It’s okay to stare. We haven’t seen anything like this in sixty years. Even considering the “all for one” attitude that was prevalent at the time, it’s hard to think that nobody looked at this ad and said “Hey, settle down, guys. It’s just cereal.”

But wait there’s more. Easily missed in the lower left of the illustration is a little fish, fleeing the Rice Krispy guys. The fish is an obvious caricature of Hideki Tojo, Prime Minister of Japan from 1941-44. Is it possible to draw a caricature of someone from a different racial background without resorting to racism? I think it is, and this illustrator definitely took the easy way out. Of course, at the time, the U.S. wasn’t really worried about being racially insensitive to the Japanese, considering the whole Pearl Harbor thing. But from a modern perspective, it’s just really weird to see major advertisers putting this kind of stuff in cereal ads. Actually, the fish could be almost any Japanese caricature. This is pretty much the standard WWII method to draw any Japanese person. Lots of old wartime cartoons depicted the Japanese exactly like this. Even after the war, it would be a few decades before everyone decided that it wasn’t cool to be casually racist for the purposes of light humor.

This ad features one of my pet peeves: Intentional misspelling for an easy trade mark. “Crispy” is spelled with a “C”, see? But you can’t put a trade mark on a single word unless it’s a new nonsense word you made up. So, spell “crispy” with a “K” and you can stick your flag in it for exclusive advertising use. This is fine, so long as the victim- err… consumer knows better. Otherwise, the advertiser is just teaching ignorance to a population that is already made up of terrible spellers. Dodge once made a version of the forgettable Neon compact car called the “Expresso”. Do you know how many people think the italian coffee is actually called “expresso”? MOST people! Once and for all, it’s called ”espresso”, and Dodge wasn’t helping people to seem less stupid by mangling the word for the sake of a trade mark. This phenomena is still in heavy favor, especially with the letter “Z”. “cray-zee”, “boyz”, “fanz”. Fortunately, nobody thinks these words are properly spelled this way… yet. That’s America for you: always willing to spread a little ignorance to move some product. “YOU EZZ AY!” YOU EZZ AY!”