January 10, 2008

Crazy Old Ads It was truly a different time. [via Oddee]

It's hard to pick a favorite, but I think the last one, "For a Better Start in Life, Start Cola Earlier!" is the best:

Laboratory tests over the last few years have proven that babies who start drinking soda during that early formative period have a much higher chance of gaining acceptance and "fitting in" during those awkward pre-teen and teen years!
Sigh. If only Mom had known...
posted by TenaciousPettle 16 years ago
  • 10 Creepy Old Ads. via snopes
  • Holy Cow! An easy 22 gaddafful advertisements in one post--no wonder my generation is so screwed up.
  • These remind me of the time TP and I were watching an old Batman serial from the early 1940s. Batman and Robin show up in Little Tokyo, which is deserted because (as the narrator explains) "A wise government rounded up the shifty-eyed Japs!" I actually think I might like a room decorated with inappropriate advertisements from bygone eras. Babies drinking soda, doctors smoking, good ol' fashioned racism and sexism, just have one big room that serves as a cultural yardstick.
  • Lara wins the Comment Trumps the Post award.
  • Ah, Love's Baby Soft. One of the first presents I ever remember getting. I wonder what the Soda Pop Advisory Board is up to these days?
  • The sites linked to by TP and Lara are so similar in layout and content that I thought I'd clicked the same one twice but the content had changed... Are these sites run by the same people? As far as I recall, the Puma ad on oddee.com was never an official advertisement. It was either a viral/guerilla ploy or a spoof. There was a second photo in a similar vein. The cola ad strikes me as a spoof. Some Dublin rugby clubs have showers like the one pictured from the Bradley group. Are communal showers uncommon in the U.S.? The Saucisson d'Auvergne ad, oh la vache!
  • no wonder my generation is so screwed up. posted by BlueHorse at 10:52PM UTC on January 10, 2008 Yeah, according to Lara's link we need to get some Thorazine for you pronto.
  • Communal showers are found in U.S. gyms, but they're usually built on the model of several showerheads coming out of a wall at intervals. That way, unless it's a particularly convivial group, you can just look at the wall and mind your own business while showering.
  • They had those four-showerheads-on-a-post things at a pool I used to work at. Two of them in the one room. I was never in there with more than one guy at a time, if anyone else was there at all, so we each had our own. Every other gym or pool had the row of showerheads on the wall model, and standard urinal-choosing protocol was adapted to the situation.
  • We like to make fun of men for being homophobic in their avoidance of each other when it comes to urinals and showers, but I have to say that it seems women are not subjected to anything even remotely similar. When I was in high school I worked with the janitors one summer cleaning my school up. When we did the girls' locker room, I was stunned to find individual shower stalls with walls and doors. No one could shower together. No one probably even saw each other naked in there. I am told that the girls rarely showered in the locker room anyway. They typically went home to do it.
  • As an aside, I never liked those four showerhead setups because no matter what I did, invariably someone would accidentally step on my cock.
  • You lie down in the bath; you're supposed to stand up in the shower.
  • I am told that the girls rarely showered in the locker room anyway. They typically went home to do it. Way to ruin my fantasy life. Sheesh. :(
  • Porky's lied to me? For shame..!
  • CARRIE NEVER HAPPENED
  • Maybe they all went home together to shower...
  • Sorry, boys. We didn't know you took it seriously. ;-)
  • Just about the time I think I can refer someone to MoFi, you guys have a conversation like this! And, for the record, I smoked Camels and I drank Coke at the age of about 3..... but I stayed the heck out of those showers!
  • The Puma ad hoax explained. I love how both sites have ads inline, between the bad old ads. Those advertisers must be irked -- "Hey! Our 'Beat the Chef' ad isn't crazy or old! Well, not old. Dangit, why did we use the GTA font?"
  • For me, a funny thing about the Puma ad was that the brand became hugely popular among the youf' in France within about 6 months of its appearance. I know these things go in cycles, with Nike followed by Adidas followed by Diadora followed by Reebok or whomever. It did seem strange to me that the fake Puma ads came so soon before the sudden explosion in the brand. But maybe the company that originated the fakes knew that Puma was planning a big new spend on advertising.
  • And the Puma ad may have been a hoax, but it's also almost a direct rip of a Guess campaign that ran a few years ago... traces of which I can't find at the moment because I really don't want to be plugging those search terms into my work computer.