"What could possibly go wrong?": Inventions from the nasty past

Call these "un-ventions". Things the inventor should have thought twice about. Things that might even be hazardous to your health and wellness (and wellbeing and stuff).

How many of these all-purpose-douche-and-enema machines did they sell, anyway? And you could wash the dog with it, too. Come to think of it, that's not such a bad deal. But boy would you ever need to clean the contraption between uses.

Hmmmmmm. That "word of warning" tells the whole story here, as does the "dual purpose" bit. I think these things are designed for ease of access, and I don't mean for taking a tinkle. And do you know what, I would NOT want to get caught in my zipper while wearing one of these.

This thing, this evil metal nose clamp, is supposed to prevent pain from hay fever, "catarrh", etc.? What the fuck IS catarrh? Is this something the human race used to get, but just doesn't get any more, or does it just no longer exist? Perhaps, like quinsy, lumbago and grippe, it simply went out of style. But hey. . . maybe that means that this contraption actually worked!

I'll try not to comment on the name of the inventor.

This is another evil thing you stuck on your face. I don't think this cured catarrh, or cat-gut-guitar or whatever, just "analyzed facial flaws" - and if the contraption is any indication, this poor woman is ALL flaws. The guy is obviously a sadist: this thing has 325 screws in it that can be tightened any way he wants.

A related issue is the Toilet Mask or (even more sinister-sounding) "face glove". I can't help but be reminded of This Is Spinal Tap's album, Smell the Glove. They still sell things that look sort of like this, things that strap on to a woman's face and make her look like Hannibal Lecter.

Hey, it's a new kind of hat, all right. A fake hat. A charlatan hat. A faux hat. A phony hat. A hat-that-doesn't-really-grow-hair. But if it didn't work, you could get a job as a chef in a robot factory.

I looked at this ad with great puzzlement, trying to figure out just what they meant by diseases of the head: mental illness, perhaps? Or was the inventor of the device perhaps thus afflicted? Then I read the description, and there it is. . . CATARRH! So catarrh, we've finally deduced, is a disease of the head. But you've got to get one of these to cure it, and unfortunately they stopped making them in 1932.

This is one of those marvelous Victorian orgasm-machines that I wish they still made. It beat the hell out of having your doctor shove his hand up your skirt, a common therapeutic treatment of the day. The ad even mentions hysteria, a catch-all term which basically meant "horny" (thus the need for one's doctor to feel one up and produce "paroxysm"). I think I'd rather have my paroxysms on a real horse, but if you don't have the space or the oats and hay, this might just do the trick. Whatever that is.

I don't understand this thing - looks like he has some sort of beehive on his head, or an underwater device, except that it's made out of felt. I've seen fabric cocoons that you can wrap around yourself, but this - is that a fire extinguisher or an oxygen tank sitting beside him? What are all those gizmos and egg-slicer thingies on his desk? I don't know if I want to get too deeply involved.

And your hair would smell just great!

This has the largest cringe-factor - no, wait. That one is coming next. But when you see the little naked baby under a sun lamp, you just die a little bit inside. If you want your kid to Stay Brown Th' Year Round, this is the way to go - until Child Protection finds out about it.

And I am truly sorry for this one, but I had to include it for the sake of historical accuracy. A long, long time ago I posted instructions for prostate massage, not because I was interested but because it read like a translation of a translation of some indecipherable foreign language (I won't say "tongue"), and thus was rendered virtually incomprehensible. This thing gives a whole new meaning to one of my favorite expressions, "Sit on this and rotate". It is obviously a dildo, one which needs to be well-lubricated for use: "Note especially those little vent holes in the nozzle through which the unguent inserted in the chamber below may be forced out by turning the knurled cap."

I cannot say another word about this.

They Came from Hell: the strangest dolls in advertising

I apologize for this, but I had to load it up-front to get you used to the flavor of this post. My obsession with old comic book ads knows no bounds, and on my recent trawl I found some pretty good ones - push-up bras made of baling wire, memberships to secret mystical societies, ads for starting your own frog ranch, circuses for a dollar starring a performing "actual live" chameleon, etc., along with classics like Grog Grows Own Tail and the chihuahua in a teacup plaintively asking, "Will you give me a home?"

But I ruthlessly cut these out of the mix when I saw the number of creepy doll ads. Like clowns, there is something inherently squickish about the doll as an object, human yet not human, and often grotesque even in its supposed cuteness. "Lifelike" is the word that comes up again and again to describe a lifeless object.

I won't get into "reborn" dolls either, often made of rubbery silicone so that their arms and legs jiggle and quiver. Some of these actually have heaters in them, heartbeats, and miniature sound systems to emit baby noises (though Edison obviously got there first). No one wants to think about the next innovation.

I've written about these incredible '60s artifacts before, but there's an update which shocked me. I used to wonder about this ad, how they could ever get away with it, and what "Lilliputian cuteness" meant (I wasn't into Swift at age eight). I tried to picture a hundred rubber dollies a few inches high, but after a while the whole thing was shoved away in a back room of memory.


Then, the wonder of the internet led to this revelation:

Someone had actually ordered these, all those years ago, and kept them in their original box. These reminded me of those little plastic ornamentations you find in cocktails, only thinner, more toothpicky. And yes, it looks as if there's quite an array of them, but the thing is, calling them "dolls" is a real stretch. Apparently in one incarnation, they came with paper clothing, but it's hard for me to imagine how that would work.

And then I found this. . . 

This is obviously the same product, but all of a sudden they're five bucks! The type is too small to read, but presumably they had dropped the Lilliputian bit. I have no idea what year this version came out. But it's ripoff times five.

There's a whole category of moving dolls, the type that emit the most godawful grinding-gears sound as they inch along. 

Some of these look like cheats. I think you have to stand behind this one and "walk" it, so it's incapable of independent movement. And any doll that costs 50 cents - I don't know. Maybe, like the 100 dolls for a dollar, she's really only an inch high, a prototype version of nanotechnology.

Botteltot just has such a strange name. You'd think the manufacturer could come up with something better, more descriptive, such as Cindy Pees-a-lot. And I just don't get Toodles. Nobody costs 44 cents, with a 19-cent "layette". Maybe, like the Walking Doll with the checkered skirt, she came with boxtops from Joy Liquid - or whatever. 

We don't have to know what the text means, which is good, because I don't. The sad purse-mouthed expression on Grasitas's face kind of says it all. And that sure is a strange diaper.

Noma the Electronic Doll is manufactured by Effanbee, which somehow makes me uncomfortable. Noma was the brand of our old Christmas lights, the ones that used to electrocute you or give you third-degree burns. Though the ad gives the impression that Noma walks, she doesn't. But she prays, which is maybe a good thing for everyone.

Does this doll resemble Regan from The Exorcist, or Carrie, or - Good God! Feel my ribs? Hear my voices? Somebody call Stephen King.

Here is a ventriloquist's dummy - always a staple of the Twilight Zone series of the '60s - who not only talks (in your own voice, of course) but SMOKES. And he's under three bucks,so what can we lose, except maybe sleep?

And here is Sandy, endowed with Rubber Wonderskin and hair you can "wave", along with the usual accoutrements (bottles with rubber nipples, etc. - though with hair like that, she can't be the right age for diapers). Someone must have believed this advertisment would attract Mommies enough to want to shell out four dollars (C. O. D.!) to scare their daughters half to death.

The Edison Talking Doll was a flop. It stopped talking after little girls had cranked it a few times, and once the public saw its inner workings, they were too creeped out to want it. The whole concept was flawed from the beginning, but I don't think it mattered to Edison. It was just another way of getting attention for his REAL phonograph, which he stole from a guy in Germany. The Berliner Talking Doll just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Order The Glass Character from:

Thistledown Press 

http://www.thistledownpress.com/html/search/genre/Fiction/the_glass_character_p580.cfm

Amazon.com

http://www.amazon.com/Glass-Character-Margaret-Gunning/dp/1927068886/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1395534131&sr=1-1&keywords=the+glass+character

Chapters/Indigo.ca

http://www.chapters.indigo.ca/books/the-glass-character/9781927068885-item.html?ikwid=the%2520glass%2520character%2520margaret%2520gunning&ikwsec=Home

What once was magical

I've been looking for the YouTube vid of this ad for over a year: it was on last year, and I was delighted to see it again. There's just something about the jingly, festive music (which is, by the way, written by Frederick Delius: Three Small Tone Poems, with this movement usually called Sleigh Ride, sometimes Winter Night: I looked it up!). The cookies and ornaments coming to life (and the snowman!) are enchanting, though, surprisingly to me, some people find them creepy.

I have trouble with Christmas, specifically what the culture has done with it. It's shark-infested waters now, one massive greed-driven buy-a-thon, and often not much else. We are really trying to pare it down, in part because Bill is retiring in the spring and we won't have much money, and it's going to happen in stages. We want to buy gifts ONLY for the grandchildren, with perhaps the adults getting a charitable donation in their name (which is something I would love to "get" - imagine giving someone the opportunity to give for Christmas!). Even with the grandkids, we want to start paying for things they can do, activities like horseback riding and crafts, rather than "stuff" that they will soon get tired of, leaving their parents to try to Craigslist it so there's room to turn around.

I remember, and this gave me a chill, someone going on the radio, an expert on traditions, and the interviewer said, "So! How did this Christmas thing get started?" At the time I was quite a devout Christian, and my jaw dropped. No longer do we celebrate "Christ" - mas, unless we're fanatics of some sort, those nuts who go to church on Christmas Eve. No one seems to remember that - traditionally, at least - a baby was born of Mary in Bethlehem, and THAT is how it all got started: the gift-giving originates with the Magi from the East (Magi being the root word for "magic").

When I was a kid, everyone seemed to have what we called a "manger scene", and we had one imported from Europe that was the talk of the neighborhood: the figures were 8 or 9 inches tall, the manger was backlit, and the camel so scrumptious I craved it to play with. Yes, there was and is lots of phony/superficial Christianity (I call it "Christian-ism"), in which church is mainly a gabfest and an opportunity for frantic baking and other jolly fundraisers so the church can have a brand new plush carpet. People stand around and eat things loaded with fat and sugar and starch and yak about their new car or whatever. Talking about your faith is awkward and seldom done. It's somehow an embarrassment. Church for the most part has become an old pair of shoes, or perhaps tattered slippers we can slip our feet into with total comfort because we know exactly what to expect.

I miss the feeling of wonder, I mean the wonder beyond cookies coming to life: the sense of holiness, which now makes me feel like a schmuck who didn't know how to do it right. I used to shed tears while taking communion, and I know that people gossiped about me and called me names that weren't very flattering (because I overheard it more than once, though they pretended they weren't doing it). At the same time, we were encouraged to "feel" the service, to have some sort of numinous experience.

People washed up on shore, usually people in the midst of personal crisis, and they almost always disappeared as soon as the crisis was averted. For them, the church was a safe, comforting womb. For me, it slowly became a tomb, a dry hole where I could no longer seek the living water that was too far below surface to access.

I needed water from the rock, but somehow or other I was considered a bit of a nut case to actually pursue it. I didn't want to make brownies or Nanaimo bars or serve on committies, which was the "proper" was to contribute to "worship" (a term I now associate with a kind of idolatry, throwing yourself on the ground and begging for mercy - and believe me, no one did THAT in that place). The few times I did try to serve on "teams" (which was the new, hip name for committees), I was pretty much told what to believe.

Anyway. . . I started with Christmas, didn't I? And I ended up here. I didn't decide one day, "gee, I think I will walk away from everything meaningful in my life after 15 years". It was more like, "I think I've had enough." There was no one, not ONE person I could talk to about this, as it just made me look like a traitor. I scrambled around with it for several years, alone and despairing, and one day (I didn't even realize it at the time!), I walked.

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Look, Mother, I'm making a few bucks off self-caricature!

William Shatner Loblaws commercial

I also remember an ad he did in the '70s for Shirriff Instant Pudding with Mini-Buds, in which he tasted the pudding with a histrionic "MMMMMMMMM!!". Maybe the lowest point in his career.