RetroFedEnmebaraGuesser, enmebaraguesser@piefed.ca
Instance: piefed.ca
Joined: 3 weeks ago
Posts: 34
Comments: 73
Posts and Comments by EnmebaraGuesser, enmebaraguesser@piefed.ca
vintageads
Comments by EnmebaraGuesser, enmebaraguesser@piefed.ca
The past is stranger than I am even capable of imagining.
The decline of this practice and the recognition of the harmful effects of tobacco led to the figure of speech “blowing smoke up one’s ass”, which means lying to someone to flatter them.
TIL.
You are welcome. I also found this, after I made the main post. Kodak Girl has got a pretty comprehensive wikipedia page -> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kodak_Girl
Lots of talk about the cultural impacts, even the impact it had on real life fashion where her striped dress style was in for a while.
Haha yeah that got me too. “Might be 4 plus a half cigarette remainder. Might be 5 and 2/3. But around 5 somewhere, we are pretty sure.”
is code for you wanna do it right now
Different times I guess. Hard for me to imagine anything less sexy than getting, or for that matter giving, a snoot full of cigarette smoke at close range.
Maybe it’s something that makes sense if you’re a smoker?
Haha yeah I thought just after I hit post, she probably got WAY less than $1000. Even inflation adjusted, probably still not.
Range of sources, I didn’t save every URL but here’s one from the Univ of Toronto,
https://library.torontomu.ca/asc/files/2013/10/DSC_0329.jpg
Main image in the post from,
https://www.publicdomainpictures.net/pictures/310000/velka/kodak-camera-vintage-poster.jpg
Also I didn’t know it at the time I made the post, but there’s a whole wikipedia page about the Kodak Girl. I’m off to read it now! It has a few other examples.
I want to know how that photoshoot went down.
“Hey, Yolanda, we’ll give you a thousand bucks if you let some guy who couldn’t make it in Hollywood blow smoke in your face from a few inches away. But you have to pretend you like it.”
Just noticed in the 1917 ad, the Karo Lady is literally an anthropomorphized ear of corn. And not shy about showing off her rows of shapely kernels, haha!
Frankly I don’t want anthropomorphized food. Feels too close to cannibalism!
Ah, I wonder if it was this guy! –> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sacchi
Haha yeah the Bogie guy would totally fool me from the side view! It’s the 2nd ad where you see him from the front, where I can tell it’s not actually Bogie.
I agree about the Ingrid lookalike. She’s pretty, but not really a ringer for Ingrid. Ingrid had a unique look, and might be very hard to find a lookalike.
The Bogie lookalike is not too bad. Especially in the side profile, less so from the front.
Yeah… I wonder if it might’ve said on the back of the bottle? I don’t see it on the front or the ad.
The reason I wonder about the back is, this was 1920’s, and in the USA, the legal requirement to disclose the ingredients of medicines was passed in 1906 under Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy was all about pure food and drugs.
Normally I think of the 1800’s or early 19-aughts as the era when ingredients were a total mystery.
Around 58s mark -> https://youtu.be/watch?v=3zgdZZmX7r8
Found what looks like a modern photo of a surviving pair of these.
It might not’ve been though. There was big advertising push in the early/middle 1900’s to get infants off breastmilk and onto formula as the “modern” way.
Even today, there are large differences related to socioeconomic class, in how many parents use formula. Also varies a LOT per country.
Since the 80’s, there has been a renewed push for breastfeeding. Advertising has been curtailed, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Code_of_Marketing_of_Breast-milk_Substitutes
7-up or not, I have watched plenty of parents giving sugar sodas or other calorie laden drinks like sports beverages as a steady diet to young children. I can’t recall any that were straight up infants like in this ad. But certainly very young children. And those children, to my eye, did appear obese. Not to mention being set on a path they will struggle to get off of, later in life.
So much modern food is terrible for you, but addictive, and advertised everywhere.
Twice as fast as what?
As NOT using digit dialing!
Phones were around for a long time before you could just pick one up and dial a number of somebody halfway across the country to call them like magic. That’s a fairly newfangled way! Before that, there was no direct dialing. An operator at a switchboard at the phone company had to physically plug a cable to connect your phone line to your callee’s phone line. You had to talk to the operator to ask them to do that!
In the very early days, you would ask for the other party by name, and the operator would look up the right jack that way. Eventually, there were exchanges, and you might ask for a particular party at “Garfield 7”, or “Madison 3”. Those are the names in the Allan Sherman song I linked below, that he is complaining about losing due to the move to digit dialing. Which is also what this ad is about - trying to get the public on board with it.
Digit dialing was not totally rolled out until the 1960’s, although it was partial before that. New York City had switchboard operators in the 1880’s. So the way you are used to, of simply entering a number to reach someone, has been the universal method for much less than half the time telephones have existed!
Editing, here is a photo of switchboard operators plugging cables in the 1950’s. But clear back in the 1880’s, it happened like that, but more primitive of course than the 1950 photo here.
Allan Sherman himself wrote a spoof about Digit Dialing!
The ad’s byline calls it a saddle horse substitute, and looking at the mechanism, it appears the part you sit on was sprung and could move somewhat independently of the base.
So I’m guessing, you would hold onto the handles and then move the seat back and forth a bit like a modern rocking chair perhaps? Maybe it could provide a small amount of exercise in the process. Even some upper body workout if you used primarily your arms on the handles to supply the force.
How that translates to the most important health mechanism ever produced is left as an exercise for the reader.
On top of being the most important health mechanism ever produced, this ad might be the most important example ever produced of why you should pick a font and stick with that one for a little while.
Yeah. Before I made the post I’d actually attempted to look a few up on Wikipedia, but came up empty handed. I didn’t try very hard though! There might be better places around the web for old timey Seattle musicians.
Oh, I see. I wonder if that could’ve been blocked by some filters? When I made the OP I ran across a photo of Eben Byers after his jaw issue, and it was rather… gruesome. I decided against putting it in the post, even with a NSFW marker, but I’m not sure what would have happened if I tried.
Here’s the wikipedia photo of them anyway. 1922.
For sure, the damage over time is an interesting subject. Like lead has a direct exposure effect (IQ loss) but I’m not sure if that passes down to subsequent generations. Maybe though… in epigenetics, there are multi generation effects. Even it doesn’t, there might still be indirect impacts. Like your society makes worse choices for itself on average, and the effects of those choices go on to cause multi generational damage in other ways.
It must’ve been studied a lot by now, but I don’t know much about it.
I think we’re paying for lead to this day! It causes intellectual impairment and all kinds of other lasting nastiness. At least we’ve taken big steps to remove it from our lived environment, so the effects are less today than in the 70s, and it should continue to get better in the future.
We still have a TON of pseudoscience “medicine” around today of course. Homeopathy, using magnets to “cure” things magnets cannot possible cure, “crystal healing”, techno-babble quackery like “quantum healing”, etc. But most of it at least is on the “useless but harmless” end of the scale, not the “makes your jaw fall off” end! Although, if it stops people from getting legit health care and treating their cancer with sham cures rather than evidence based medicine, that is a type of harm too.
Perpetual health! Pay no attention to the mandibular necrosis. (1910s-20s)
Radium infused products were a common quack medicine in the early 1900’s. A notorious one was Radithor, from 1918 to the 1930’s.
For comparison, big wheels were advertised 4 - 9, so quite a bit younger range. But there was also a little wheel for 2 1/2 - 4, and a mini wheel for tots 1 1/2 - 3.
For bikes, pediatric groups have fuzzy ranges and say most children learn some time between 3-9. Random web site claims ahead -> The fraction of children who learn to ride a bike is 75% (UK numbers) where their parents were at 95%. The US was on a similar trend, but since 2018 it has reversed, and there is a surge of children (and adults!) riding bikes.
As it turns out…
I am imagining many shins getting thwacked by madly spinning pedals as it barrels down a steep hill. No ability to coast (right?) So if it goes too fast on a steep hill, you’d have to remove your feet from the pedals and try not to get beat up by it.
From each, according to his ability to pedal!
And if I may…
To each, according to his need for speed!
Green Machine (1976)
Like a Big Wheel, but cooler.
Buick Century (1956)
Modern photo,
Woah!!
For sure. Especially because those penny farthings were not exactly safe machines, and he survived his whole bicycle career. It was very easy to be pitched over the front and sustain a head injury. Severe injuries and fatalities were common.
Columbia bicycle, faster than a horse (1880)
1172 miles in 6 days is a feat! Impressive on a modern bicycle on modern paved roads, let alone a penny farthing.
In the postcard, it looks a little like a colossal jellyfish, with the lit up parachutes. That is sort of eerie!
Canadian Red Cross (1940)
Wartime ad from the Canadian Red Cross. Also, cover illustration from the Toronto Star Weekly, 1941. It was 1941, so clearly the best way to recuperate from a war injury was to smoke some cigarettes!
Yes, but the ride is not. Hence, it (the parachute ride) was…
I included recent photos of the structure, and info about modern lighting, so I know the tower structure is still there!
Coney Island Parachute Jump (Ride 1939-1964, card date unknown)
It was a 250 foot fall tower, opened in 1939 for the World’s Fair, and operated through 1964. Riders would be raised to the top and then descend on parachutes in a canvas seat, which took about 10-20 seconds. Quite a ride for 1939! There were shock absorbers at the bottom to ease the landing.
For sure. It seems like a solid idea. Well not the tophat part, but the rest. Much better than just your arms.
I never knew of them either. But I don’t know if that’s because they never caught on, or because I don’t know shit about 1800’s lumberjacking. I wonder if maybe steam power destroyed the market for these. But feels like it could’ve had a niche. A water or steam powered sawmill beats it, but you have to get the logs there. You could set up one of these on-prem to segment logs too big to easily move to a mill. But I’m speculating. Maybe it was too narrow a niche, or came too late, to find a market?