4/19/13

The Boy Scientist(s) - A lot of cupping, these days.


Joke #1 - One pound Uranium's radioactivity Equal to 2,600,000,000,000,000,000 pounds of coal.

Joke #2 - An Introduction to Wonderful Worlds for Young American Replicants!

Joke #3 - * Please try to limit Uranium exposure to cupping in hand. If Uranium is accidentally ingested, please try to excrete all particles. Do not excrete cubed Uranium! Cubed Uranium should be jettisoned through standard Abdominal Rejection Panel. Try not to breathe Uranium. Especially try not to breathe excreted Uranium. Each sold separately.

Joke #4 - the Boy Scientist, calculating the ickyness of girls to six decimal places by 1958.

Joke #5 - A Space Platform May Look Something Like This. Also available in black anthracite, brushed aluminum, or chromed finish. Spinners are not recommended for installation on Space Platform.

Joke #6 - Excreting one ingested pound of Uranium equal to excreting 2,600,000 pounds of ingested coal!

Joke #7 - the Boy Scientist, and his 1/1 scale, identical ventriloquist dummy scientist... probably powered by Uranium.

Joke #8 - If it's really the "Finest Gift for Boys", why is there a money back coupon?

Joke #9 - the Virgin Boy Scientist, by John Lewellen

Joke #10 - With uranium, you can lovingly cup in your hand the energy in 2,600,000 pounds of lovingly cupped coal!

Joke #11 - the Boy Scientist, soon developing the Standardized Abdominal Rejection Panel, for a safe clean future of cubed uranium ingestion.

Joke #12 comes to us from the fancy-balled one himself. Thanks to Misterfancyhotballs_2! - Joke #12 - Introduction to Wonderful Worlds for Young Conjoined Americans who enjoy being hand-fed Uranium!


[Commenter jokes will be added to the post.  Mgmt.]



4/17/13

Diesel Training - Give us a big hand.

Diesel and heavy Equipment are expanding industry. If you have mechanical aptitude, or are several hundred feet tall, write for free information. Please use giant tweezers to fill in form with tiny, normal-sized pen. Allow two normal-sized weeks for delivery.

If you have mechanical aptitude, also write for free information "Giant Tweezer Manufacturing Training Service", which is a coincidentally expanding industry.

If you have attractive hands, also see ad on pg 64 "Scale Model Cupping and Caressing Training Service".

If you are normal sized and have tiny mechanical aptitude, write for free information "Inexplicably Small Machine Repair", which is an expanding industry, though you'd never guess because they're so inexplicably small.

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4/16/13

Sergeant's Worm-Away - He's gotta have it!

Aaah, simpler times. Time was, you could run a picture like this without people getting the wrong idea.

Hurry up with the powder! Puppy needs his din-din, and don't skimp on the Worm-Away. He hasn't had any in hours, man, and he's gonna go nuts if you can't get him some shit, like immediately! Maybe just a little taste, you know, to get him through to supper? Just a taste? Just a little taste? Come onnnn, maaaan! I mean, yeah, he's got worms, but he'd swear he's got bugs crawling all over him, mannnn! They're coming out of his pores, and one little taste of that sweet sweet candy will make it all go away.

Just a little bit of that stuff and he'll be chasing his tail, and catching his tail, and eating his tail, and puking up his tail, and eating his tail again, and jumping around and barking and barking and barkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbarkbark THUD.

*Sergeant's Worm-Away. Use only as directed...  in a Porsche 944.... probably with a prostitute... who probably needs a dose of Worm-Away herself.


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4/15/13

Sears, Roebuck and Co. - Acme Anvils

Citizens, it is with great pride of merchandise that we are able to bring to you, our customers, this, the greatest of the anvil-maker's art. The Acme anvil, which is truly the finest we have seen in all of the world.

No longer is it a daily necessity that you somehow live under the tyranny of the knowledge that you must use an anvil made by The Hated British, merely because you desire the finest anvilling in the whole of the world. Now, anvils of the Finest Quality are made here in the United States by the good Acme Company, and we defy any Charlatan to call them inferior in any way!

There is a steel face for greater hammering, which is welded to the glorious wrought-iron body. "How is it welded to the body? By the work of Demons?" you say? No, dear customer. The extra-heavy steel face is welded to the wrought-iron body by an Electrical process that harnesses the very heavenly forces of lightning in the mighty hand of man! Never the twain shall part, under the vigor of your hardest smithying. We dare say this is tantamount to owning a solid steel anvil, which, we will remind you, can only be afforded by the richest Princes of the Distant East.

The face is tempered by a Secret Process, carried out in a veiled ritual of the Anvil Maker's art. The quality of the tempering all but assures the Anvil Customer total absence of being-too-hard-ness or being-too-soft-ness. These problems are rampant in lesser-quality anvils, and the secrets of the Acme Company have eradicated them in their process.

The face is trued by a special machine of a certain construxion whose accuracy and firmness are irreproachable in their quality of make. This machine for truing of the Acme anvils is so very special that there is none other like it in all the land. There are no hollows protuberances or concavities in the totality of the anvil face, which will magnify the greatness of the smithy that owns it.

Sears, Roebuck, and Co. now delivers to the Great Deserts of the American South-West, making available these finely-made anvils to all who dwell there. In such places Acme anvils are utilitous for the purposes of smithying, and also for counter-weighting traps and snares of all kinds, owing to the ready availability of mesas, and the great heights these afford the clever trap-maker.

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4/12/13

Nabisco Shredded Wheat - An honest day's work.

"Not 'fancy' food is what kids need!" Let's heard it for baffling sentence is what is here!





This whole ad seems like a preliminary design. It would be good to see some art director's notes on it. "Nice copy, but doesn't make sense". Use better picture. Maybe one where the boy's not grimacing". Blame the photographer. "Cram this bail of hay in your mouth. Open wide. Wider. Wider. I said 'wider', Stan! Good. Now try to smile. Now hoooooolld it....



Good thing the arrows are there to show us where the food is. It could easily be a carpet sample or a toupee' in the bowl, and It doesn't get any easier to tell once you put it in your mouth. "Nope. Could be hair, or grath clippingf. Definitely noffing fancy. That'f for fure. Can I thake it out now?... I thaid 'CAN I FAKE IT OUT OF MY MOUF NOW??? Jeeth."'





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4/10/13

Triumphant Marketing Triumphs - A rose by any other name.


Troutman's Cough Syrup - This name may seem like an error in judgment, due to customers' aversion to drink anything that may have been made from fish. However, the name "Troutman's" was settled on, only after rejecting several other names:

-Dr. Pukebath's Extra-Tolerable Cough Syrup
-Crotchworth's Secret Formula Throat Remedy
-Durian's Non-Fragrant Sick Juice
-LiquiShit

Adolph's Sugar Substitute - Previous to it's renaming, Adolph's Sugar Substitute  failed to fly off shelves under the names:

-Hitler's Secret Sprinkles
-Schweet Und Shprinkly
-The Third Reich of Sweeteners


Romilar-CF may seem an intimidating name for a cough remedy, but sales noticeably picked up after a few experimental name changes:

-Romilar Afri-Koff
-Panzer-Gag
-Luftkoffa
-Professor Romil's Uber-Yummy Throatkreig


4/9/13

Westinghouse - Tribune Tower

From the publication of Rich Uncle Pennybags, the Monopoly guy, comes this ad for Westinghouse, which was apparently still pretty cranked in 1936 about their air conditioning system for the Tribune Tower, completed ten years before. Must have been quite a job if it was still at the top of their resume after ten years.

Yep. Westinghouse still had their chest puffed out all big about their HVAC kung fu on display at the Tribune. They even call the air "pasteurized", but they had the good sense to put the term in quotes to deny any literal implication.

This painting looks to be a watercolor by Somebody Hughes. I'm afraid that's not enough for the Research and Googling team to do an artist search. Sorry. However, we do have a match for the font used in the headline. If you want to duplicate this exact text, you'll be looking for Stymie Black. If you're not, then don't. Suit yourself.

So what's there now?



Hey! Tribune Tower! All right! I have a feeling that the building will be there long after the actual newspaper has met it's end. Either that, or the Trib will have to think of a way to make money without actually selling newspapers, poor thing, because more and more people are getting their news for free on the web. Think fast, guys!

It wasn't easy to match the angle this closely. I think the painting in the ad was "shot" from the stairs leading down to the water, and Google Street View doesn't let you drop the little yellow man down there. You can see what I mean more clearly in this night shot from Wikipedia:


I wonder if the designers of the building (John Mead Howells and Ray Hood) would approve of us bedazzling their Neo-Gothic masterpiece with disco lights.


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