💀The JOY of SMOKING! (Bizarre '60s Propaganda Film)💀

I promised myself I wouldn't fuss over how many views I get on YouTube, but I must confess it seems a bit bizarre to have 20,500+ subscribers and only 30 views/video. There are a VERY few that got absurd views, such as the one with Motormouth that got 14 MILLION+, and rising, with a hundred thousand or so comments. Just ridiculous, and it has not helped my views whatsoever. 

I don't know what I'm doing wrong, but it could be I MUST be monetized to be recommended anywhere, and I'm not going to do that. I wouldn't make anything, and it causes endless problems in that you get demonetized at the drop of a hat (or a swear-word). I want to just enjoy this, and it HAS been nearly 12 years, and it DOES incorporate all my favorite hobbies, but why do they get such wretched views when I work just as hard on them as on the very few that got freakishly high ones? Checking my channel every morning has become abysmal, one of the low points of my day. Yet I keep on. I don't know what else to do.

As for the ads, how bizarre can it get? I found these on Internet Archive, which must be one of the first websites on the internet, as the format has not been updated in 30 years and is ridiculously hard to search. It's really completely random. But I have never heard of Century cigarettes, and having these historic figures puffing away is one of the more bizarre methods of smoking propaganda. The thumbnail is from another ad, but has not been altered in any way. Madness.

Great moments in advertising

That adorable little Mexican girl in the taco commercial!

What Men Don't Like About Women

 

"It is unquestionable that. . . the remarks made by Thomas D. Horton are of the shock variety, but then the truth has always been so." - Bethlehem Bulletin

"There is not the slightest likelihood of any male ever reviewing this book before a women's club. The insurance premium would be prohibitive. Turn to any chapter, any paragraph and read it aloud in the presence of a female, and you'll have fury with its claws out." - Columbus News

The blurry lines at the bottom reveal the ruse: that this book is meant to be comedy, not misogyny: "Enjoy the most rib-tickling treat you've ever had or return in 5 days - for refund. Don't delay. A unique hilarious experience is yours! Send this coupon - TODAY!" Doesn't exactly match up with the hateful copy we've seen up to now. Or maybe it does? Too bad these books aren't still around. They'd be a unique, rib-tickling psychological illumination.

You're suddenly shapelier!

The worst ad in television history

This thing is just unbelievably primitive, from the screechy adult-pretending-to-be-a-kid to the brain-dead-sounding Dad, and graphics that look like they were cut out with garden shears. But Colorforms were what we all played with, and nobody complained. 

That's advertising!

The giant bar of soap: Bath-Size Camay

Honorable mentions:

Hurricane Fur Wizard

The Hurricane Fur Wizard started life as the Fur Wizard, one of those handy-dandy products pushed on obnoxious TV commercials, but it didn't sell very well. It was nothing but an ordinary double-sided lint brush, the type with bristles that point backwards to collect the lint, fur, dust, etc. on your furniture and clothes.The only selling point was the scabbard that you stick it into, which supposedly scrapes off all the collected fur so you don't have to do it with your fingers.

Then at some point, seeing sinking sales figures, the As Seen On TV geniuses thought, hmmm! What if we "rebrand" it as the HURRICANE Fur Wizard? It sounds like one of those rotary cleaners that whirls an entire room into a vortex of cleanliness, except that really, it's the same product: an ordinary double-sided lint brush.

How a blue brush that picks up dog hair can even remotely resemble a hurricane is beyond me, and I have no idea if the name change helped sales. But I confess I love As Seen on TV ads. Lately they've been choked with tiresome pitches for faux copper cookware, and as for that old Southern lady (the one who makes pudgy pies in the toasting iron), how I wish she would go away.

But the older ones, the "has this ever happened to YOU?" ones with the "oh, NO!" and the "wah, wah, wah, waaaaaah", those I love. The newer ones are a mere shadow, but I suppose we have to be happy with what we have.

Don't we.

Snap, crackle, oh damn.

I don't remember seeing this particular Rice Krispies ad as a kid, mainly because it was a few years before my time. Yes! There are actually things that happened before I existed on this earth, and this ad was one of them. 

What's strange about it is that they tell you to send away for something that costs FIFTEEN CENTS, meaning it's particularly expensive in the cereal box world. This was the era of "free inside!", after all, or toys you got just for sending in box tops. I remember laboriously cutting or tearing off box tops and mailing them to Battle Creek, Michigan, for my "free" toy, which usually never came.

But this is really strange. Not only do you have to pay fifteen cents for these things, the "dolls" you get aren't even assembled! You have to cut them out, sew around the outside, then stuff them with cotton, presumably not provided. Which means that you're basically getting a printed piece of cloth.

I don't know how many of these pathetic dolls survive today, but I did find some replicas (which I made into a gif, above) that are quite impressive - probably a lot more impressive than the dolls. We've dealt with the cloth Harold Lloyd dolls that you could get free (with purchase) at the Piggly Wiggly, but those were at least sewn together and looked fairly substantial. 

These would look like nine kinds of hell even if you were a good seamstress, and how many eight-year-olds can say that? I can tell that Mom must have ended up doing a lot of these on her sewing machine, turning them inside-out to sew the seam, then finding some "cotton batten" (batting) or kapok, which was what we used back then to stuff anything.

But hey nonny! I cannot believe what I just found - there IS a surviving Rice Krispies doll, on an old page about cloth dolls that came from cereal boxes and such. It's nearly as hideous as I would have imagined. 

But this one, oh damn.

    
                             OH damn.      

Smoke SAFELY in your car!

Old ads for products that now, somehow, don't seem like such a good idea are a staple of this blog. This one just jumped out at me as wrong on so many levels, I can't even count them all. Those vape things, e-cigarettes (the gadgets that are supposed to help you stop smoking) keep exploding in people's pockets, reminding me of that classic rhyme which begins, "Liar, liar. . . ". But the potential for disaster here seems infinitely magnified. 

I can't begin to transcribe all the flyspeck type on this thing, but the bottom sums it up: 

Delivers A Lighted Cigarette - - Instantly. Every smoker wants this new magic invention. Look what happens at the touch of the magic button. A cigarette slips out automatically toward your lips - you hear a click - and there's a flame burning right at the end  of the cigarette. A touch - a puff - and that's enough! A life saver to car drivers. You puff, and with the lighted cigarette between your lips, you draw it from the case. Then there is another click. The magic case is closed, the flame is out, and the next cigarette automatically jumps into position for the next smoke. Think of getting such amazing results. 

I can just make out the part about A Life Saver To Car Drivers.

You don't have to take your eyes off the road any more, and both hands off the wheel, to light a cigarette. Avoid the danger of life and property loss by using a Magic Case. Travel 60 miles an hour if you wish and light a cigarette withiout removing your vision from the road for an instant, or both hands from the wheel. All it takes is a touch, a puff. . . and you're smoking. . . SAFELY! The Magic Case is INDISPENSIBLE to car drivers.

I'm still trying to figure out the sequence of events here, involving clicks, puffs, lighted cigarettes and steering wheels, not to mention the potential danger of driving an incredible 60 miles per hour (the origin of the dusty phrase, "going like sixty").  But if you dropped this sucker while it was incendiary, might it not burn a hole in your pants, if not your scrotum? If there were some papers rustling around at your feet, or - oh, say, an oily rag or two - . But this is mere conjecture. Going on and on about "smoking safely" feels like an oxymoron in itself. Open flames, that close to your face - and just what is it that fuels these flames? At what sort of Lilliputian service station would you refill this thing?  And the flint - or whatever - the sulphur - it doesn't bear thinking about.

Looking on Google images, I see hundreds of cigarette cases, and to me it's like looking at Star Trek phasers or remote controls for Doomsday. It just does not apply, it has nothing to do with me. So they all look exotic and deadly. Do some of them automatically ignite your cigarette before it even touches your lips? I have no idea. It's possible, I guess. The world of smoking repulses me more than I can say. But in this ad, it's a given, just something everybody does, and having your cigarette lighted for you is seen as the ultimate in convenience.

It would have changed so much. Now, Voyager would have been ruined, because Paul Henreid wouldn't have done that business with lighting the two cigarettes and giving one to Bette Davis. Ernie Kovacs might have survived, however, if they had made a Magic Case for cigars. He was barrelling along a tortuous, unfamiliar road at midnight, in torrential rain, in a defective and unfamiliar car, when he decided that now might be a nice time to enjoy a cigar. He could light cigars with one hand, cleverly igniting the match with his thumbnail, but in this case he took his hand off the wheel at exactly the wrong time and ended up in twisted, smoking wreckage. 

He never would have used one of these anyway because they are so goddamn stupid. And I can't find anything more about them anywhere, so probably they didn't even catch on. 

Busy day: surrealism in advertising

Don't Stay Too Fat! and other stupid Friday things

OK, Corpula. Now comes something even more strange. . .

Ew. I don't know what's more creepy: "toilet mask" or "face glove". To be Worn Three Times in the Week, it says. Just don't wear it in public, particularly not when banking.

Throw your truss away! Get cured for $15. Farmers and Teamsters. "Cured My Rupture Without Cutting". THESE HUNDRED MEN insist, but I can't see how this wouldn't hurt. 

The flesh brush might be one of those vibrator-thingies they used on Victorian women to cure their "hysteria". If it was me, I think it would CAUSE hysteria, or at least some sort of sexual spasm. But maybe that was the cure. The flesh brush sends out little pinpricks of electricity. This was seen as a cure for everything. I can't read the rest of the copy, unfortunately.

This is so great that I must transcribe it word-for-word (though I hate doing that!):

"JOY'S CIGARETTES afford immediate relief in cases of ASTHMA, WHEEZING, and WINTER COUGH, and a little perseverence will effect a permanent cure. Universally recommended by the most eminent physicians and medical authors. Agreeable to use, certain in their effects, and harmless in their action, they may be safely smoked by ladies and children."

This one is even creepier: "Comfort, health and fashion demand right physical proportions. You can reduce the flesh on your entire body, or any part, by wearing one of Dr. Jeanne Walter's famous rubber garments for men and women a few hours a day."

Sorta like this, I guess. You'd lose weight, all right, and keel over from dehydration.

This Smedley guy is "THE KING" of CURES, and claims to be able to cure just about anything with his famous Chillie Paste. I can't read the ingredients, which probably aren't listed anyway, but could this be ordinary chili pepper extract of some kind, something that merely brings a sort of glow to the skin?

Kind of like when you rub your meat.

POST-POST: It's nearly Saturday now, and here I sit. What is the purpose of life? Surely not to sit on your ass blogging at midnight. There HAS to be more to it than that. But I can't afford romantic vacations or thrilling international adventures. Such things will be forever out of my reach. 

I do like ads, though - have always liked them, and the older they are the better. As a sort of caboose to the last bunch of them, I found some extremely gruesome corset ads that nevertheless boast of "ease", "comfort" and "fit".