Accident Investigation - A sexy tragedy.

Today, we learn once again that investigating accidents is not only a hilarious and super gnarly way to make a living, it is also a great way to meet chicks, or dames, depending on your era. This ad is from 1960, so I think we can say “chicks”.

 Check it out, man. That guy just ran over a hot babe, and sure he’s too freaked out to enjoy peeping at her gams, but YOU, as the accident investigator, aren’t worried about getting thrown into the slammer. So, you park your Valiant near the scene and take charge of the very hot, erotic accident action.

Thing number first, you need to get that mug back in his car. He’s only cramping your style. “Scram, Charley. You sit tight and maybe wet your pants or something. Back in your jalopey post haste, you get me? I got some investigation to look at.” you whip out your official accident investigation note pad, followed closely by your Universal Schools logo pen. Clickety click, and you’re ready to take some juicy notes.

“Mmmm. Victim: very female. Late twenties.

Lips: full. Pouty, slightly parted. Sensuous.

Sweater: Cashmere. Straining against the burgeoning cones of her ultra-modern brasierre.  Me likey! I plan to investigate their accident more fully later on.

Skirt: Thrown up delightfully high by the violence of the impact, or possibly a lucky breeze. If there were any more leg visible, I’d have an accident of my own!

Purse:  White, with strewn contents. Hey! Five bucks! Yoink!

Other notes: One giant magazine. Ah! She’s the brainy type! Careful though, she may have been bringing the giant magazine home to her giant husband, and by the looks of things he may be thirty or forty feet tall. I’d better do all my investigating before he shows up!

Conclusions: Judging by the position of the car, the nerd must have backed over the babe in question, knocking her giant magazine from her hands. Driving backwards in 1960 is considered an act of communism. He makes me sick, this backwards-driving, dame-flattening nerd. I have no choice but to punch him in the nuts and triple his premium, the commie bum.

Thank god I was here. Me! The red-blooded all-American accident claim investigator. Thank you, the Universal Schools!

GE Automatic Laundry - Convenient drudgery.

Joke #1: "Dear Sexual Stereotype magazine. I've never written a letter like this before, but just the other night I was in the basement ironing clothes for my husband when a funny thing happened…”

Joke #2: In the years of the post-war boom, middle-class Americans enjoyed many luxuries of the automatic age. Worries of household mishaps became thing of the past, thanks to new technological wonders. Here, a happy housewife reads her mail while having her leg reattached with the help of her General Electric MagicSurgeon.

 Joke #3: Here in the modern, liberated fifties, women are free to live out their dreams as never before. For example, while her husband is out playing golf, Jeannie runs her own her basement laundry service, which helps to bring in extra cash for those little things that make life more pleasurable, like a new set of golf clubs, for example.

Joke #4: In the modern home of 1952, lame or crippled persons are no longer a drain on society. This one-legged woman has been installed into this home laundry press, where she can live out a happy, fulfilling life as an integral part of a marvelous ironing machine.

Joke #5: In the modern press-putton home of the future, as envisioned by GE, time spent laboriously buffing your knees in the past can now be used on more enjoyable activities, thanks to the new General Electric Patella-Tron.

 

Joke #6: “Dear Gary, I know you cannot understand what I’m about to tell you, but I feel that I must try, if for no other reason than to put my mind at ease. I’ve always felt that our relationship was based on honesty, and I still feel I owe you that much. I’m leaving you for the GE Automatic Ironer. I know what you’d say if I told you face to face: ‘This is crazy’. That’s why I’m writing you this letter. You see, for many months I’ve……”

Seaforth - Fathers' day caucus.

I've never heard of Seaforth grooming products. By the looks of the ad, fathers used Seaforth products on the campaign trail to win the love of the fickle pre-teen male electorate, who could vote, apparently.

It is a little known fact that president Eisenhower's landslide 1952 election victory against Adlai Stevenson was won in large part by his devotion to the concerns of boys all over America. Stevenson mistakenly addressed pre-adolescent male issues with reason and even-handedness, having been thrown off the mark by poorly conducted early election polls. Eisenhower easily won the confidence of boys aged 8-12 with his widely embraced "no more girls" policy and strong opinion against slingshot control. After winning the endorsement of Dennis the Menace, Eisenhower's victory was all but assured, and Stevenson was handed a stinging defeat.

This ad features a really great painting by an unnamed artist. It's got that beautiful impressionistic brushwork that I envy so much in the work of Gil Elvgren and Haddon Sundblom. As always right click on it for a larger version.

It reminds me of my days as an adoring boy, greeting my dad at the breakfast table on Fathers' Day, carrying hand-lettered signs smeared with feces, just like in the picture. Great days.

Sunbeam Hair Dryer - Heat haze.

Joke #1: "My Sunbeam Beauty Blur system keeps me beautifully out of focus all day long. From a light and breezy two pixels to a romantic seventy-five pixel blur, Sunbeam makes me gorgeously gaussian!"

Joke #2: Sunbeam's Controlled Heat hair dryer dries your hair thoroughly and quickly at any temperature you select, even those hard-to-dry areas where hair is thicker, like the small of your back, or behind your knees...

Joke #3: The extra large cap fits any hair styling, from sensible flips to insanely bulbous up-do's that will baffle generations to come.

Joke #4: "The Lady Sunbeam's controlled heat hair dryer fondles your hair with a gentle flow of air. The head-groping cap assures the most intimate fit while it blows your head to completion.

Joke #5: "With my Lady Saigon Reeducation Cap, I can be rehabilitated into society through the glory of labor and the extinction of American imperialist ideas... all while keeping my hair shining at it's radiant best!"

Joke #6:"What's that dear? Yes, I'll be playing bridge with Judy and Trish this afternoon. You'll be home for dinner, won't you? Yes, I'm making Salmon tonight. What time will you be home? What's that? I'm sorry, honey, I can't hear you. You'll have to speak up. I'm plugged into the Hive Mind. yes, the Travoltas and Cruises say 'good luck' with the presentation today."

Little Ads - Art for horny prudes.

The ad does say "study art", not "understand basic anatomy", so I guess there's no lie here. What's going on with this woman's boobs? The "drapery" is clearly not covering her chest, and those are definitely her boobs, but something's missing. I can't quite put my finger on it (heh heh). Maybe the artist is conflicted about nude women? Horny enough to focus on drawing boobs, but too shy to finish the job?

"Black Vendetta" model, only $5.95. Also see our "Angry Drifter" model, "Error in Judgement" model, and our "Twitchy Loner" model.

 

 New for campers. Superior to other baby packs that place the child on your chest. Great for families with exceptionally ugly children. Also allows your child to warn you of snipers attacking from behind.

"...Also earn top pay conducting the All-Fostex chorus."

Surplus radiation counters. Never wonder again why you just died. Special three-for-one pricing! One for each arm. See our shop in Megaton. Disclaimer: Some surplus units may be mildly radioactive. Not to be used to detect or treat any environmental threats.

Philco refrigerator - Just a quickie.

Time is short again this morning, so instead of posting nothing at all, here's a nice ad for a Philco fridge. It features a nice re-rendered photograph. It doesn't really deserve any jokes, so if it weren't for quick posts like this morning, it may not have been used, otherwise. More jokes tomorrow.

Sanka - "Airbrush" rhymes with "awful".

I'm sure there are some examples of airbrushing that are quite good. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that those examples' goodness rises in direct proportion to their undetectability. What I mean is, good airbrushing is invisible. This ad from Sanka typifies what makes airbrush so awful.

In 1973, when this Sanks ad ran in Good Housekeping, airbrushing stood on the precipice of it's ascendency. Fancy words, huh? The airbrush would come to define the eighties. Most notably, it's presence would be felt on hundreds of shitty album covers like This lady who calls herself "Brooke" and Boston's entire discography. These album covers are recognizable, and the music's quality may be debatable, but I insist that these renderings are pretty bad. You look at them and instantly go "airbrush". The technique is very hard to disguise, and rarely is. In fact, in the eighties, you were nobody unless you used an airbrush. One more example of bad judgement, thanks to the eighties.

 An airbrush is basically a small hand held spray gun. Because of this, if you want a clean edge on something, you have to cut a "frisket", which is more or less a sticky-backed stencil that you cut with an X-acto knife. Airbrushing without a frisket gives smokey appearance, and the overspray tends to bring out the paper texture in blank areas of the paper as the paint floats across the surface and is caught on the imperfections in the paper. Because the paint is being blown onto the surface, you don't really ever MIX colors when airbrushing. The colors can be speckled into each other with a light spray, but that's not the same as actually mixing. An airbrushed artwork tends to look foggy, speckly, and lacks detail. The best results are always achieved on smooth surfaces, like the side of a van. I say "best" as in "no paper grain or cotton fibers to catch the overspray". We see the best examples of execution and technique on vehicles, due to the durability of the surface and the sophistication of the paints available for automotive use. But why, why, WHY is the subject matter in these examples almost always that of  a petulant adolescent fantasy? People who want things painted on their cars tend to like what they like, and it usually stems from a masculinity complex.

It can be quick, however. Millions of hack artists have made money airbrushing T-shirts while you wait. You get what you pay for. Airbrushed T-shirts are almost always freehanded, without the use of friskets. So, you get the smokey overspray in the fibers of blank areas, just like on paper. For some reason, airbrush artists are preoccupied with painting evil clowns. If you get "good" at painting evil clowns on T-shirts, you can make a mint in any tourist trap, painting shirts for thirteen year old boys trying to look tough... or any gang banger wannabe trying to look like a thirteen year old boy. It's surprising (or not) to see how many professional airbrushists still have mullets.

Airbrush guys just looove to paint chrome. It's one of the few things that lends itself to a sprayed medium. Quite often, it's priority number one when Billy gets his airbrush kit. Once he sort of figures it out, he then begins to paint pretend album covers for his horrible junior high garage band. If he's lucky, he grows out of it by the age of twenty, or not.

So, yeah. Sanka. Dehydrated decaffeinated coffee. Sanka gives you both reasons not to drink coffee in one product, as well as all the reasons to hate airbrush. Here's a slogan for General Foods' Sanka division. "Sanka: Everything by negative example." You're welcome, Sanka.