Vintage ads showing women as trophy kills

I recently caught this ad on Sociological Images' Twitter feed. While vintage ad sexism is easy enough to find, I'd never seen this one before. It lives on the site for Lucky Tiger, a men's grooming products brand, and Time says it's from 1957.

Apparently, taxidermied women was a thing in the 50s. This one is quite well known:

Via Retronaut

But it was still going on in the '70s:

Via Fashion Rat

Hunting metaphors have long been part of the culture when it comes to "courting", but taking it to its logical conclusion is beyond bizarre.

The "good old days" when Santa sold smokes

The Guardian reported last October that a new edition of Clement C Moore's 1823 poem A Visit from St. Nicholas, which is widely attributed with popularizing the modern image of Santa Claus, has censored all references to the visitor's pipe:

"The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth, 

And the smoke, it encircled his head like a wreath"

Canadian publisher Pamela McColl released the bowdlerized poem through her own company, Grafton and Scratch.

Ms. McColl explains:

"I have edited out a few words and lines that reference Santa smoking and removed the cover illustration of his pipe. The omission of these few words do not change the material intent of the author nor do they infringe on the reader's understanding or enjoyment of this historically-rich story, but by removing these words we may save lives and avoid influencing new smokers," she says. "I think these edits outweigh other considerations. If this text is to survive another 200 years it needs to modernise and reflect today's realities. I want children to celebrate the spirit of giving and to reflect proudly on the holiday traditions that shape their childhood, and the best way to honour Santa and this story is to make him smoke-free."

When my parents were kids, Santa didn't just smoke a pipe. Through the magic of big tobacco advertising, he also enjoyed promoting several brands of cigarettes:

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

Source

I'd just like to add that I totally disagree with what Pamela McColl did to the old poem. 

I am also very much anti-smoking, but I am also anti-censorship. Old works are expressions of their time, and they provide an opportunity to talk with kids about why certain things were considered okay in the past, and why they are not now. In my opinion, this helps prepare kids for a world in which "normal" is a constantly moving target. By sheltering them, you only make them believe that the world was always as it is now. And how are they supposed to cope with change then?

This Halloween campaign could scare you to death

Via

What the holy hell?!? You would be justified in asking.

According to Stanford School of Medicine, these 1951 ads are — ironically — making fun of other brands' empty marketing promises of being "better for you" rather than fighting against the real medical science that would force ads to start to be more honest about the deadliness of their products a decade later.

Towards the end of the era in which false medical claims were endemic (early 1950s) the Old Gold brand had a prolonged campaign - with more than 50 variations on this theme - in which they touted: "We Don't Try to Scare You with Medical Claims." Ironically, many of these ads in their fine print make outlandish statements that Old Golds were less irritating and thus safer than the competition. Somehow they calculated that the public would not see this obvious hypocrisy. Note the white box strangely reminiscent of the Surgeon General's warning introduced years later. In what can only be characterized as rank hypocrisy, they claim Old Gold's are less irritating and easier on the throat.

Via 

Boo! **cough cough cough**

Union Carbide's 1950s promise of "...a hand in things to come"

How d'ya like them apples?

Retronaut recently featured this amazing gallery of Big Brother-ish ads from Union Carbide. Besides the classic 1950s illustration and long copy, they are fascinating for the postwar arrogance of the whole thing.

This was an era when science was on the march, and anything was possible if we had the right men on the job. From pesticides to energy, petrochemicals to bionic parts, this company promised to shape the world of tomorrow.

The real question is, how many of these were positive developments, and how many contributed to the sad state of the world today?

Chemicals from coal. Check out the green mist.

Yikes!

This environmental destruction is supposed to be inspiring, not terrifying.

My elbow was recently rebuilt with stuff like this.

sand... I mean SAND!

Fabricated building materials. Dig the sexy lede.

The original Green Revolution.

Weatherproof materials and treatments.

Oscar-winning arc lighting.

Plastic landscape fabric.

God complex much?

Maybe se should go back to the word "atomic".
People are much less likely to mispronounce that.

Powering the modern housewife...

...and the jet set.

Of course, the optimism couldn't last forever. In December 1984, Union Carbide ended up having a "hand" in killing 3,787 people in Bhopal, India, when one of their pesticide plants leaked deadly toxins into the air of the nearby slums.

Among their other handiwork are the dioxins in Sydney Harbour, Australia, that have made all fish there unsuitable for human consumption, death by silicosis of 476 West Virginia miners in the 1920s, and buildings with lots and lots of asbestos.

 I wonder if these two later turned on, tuned in, and dropped out?

Creepy 1959 voyeur mag encourages stalking, collecting "pretty girls"

How sleazy could this 1959 ladmag really be? That was a time of wholesomeness and chaste respect for womanhood, right?

In this scanned full issue at Retronaut, you can learn the basics of treating women like trashy conquests, such as:

And:

But don't worry, guys. It's all a big game to those girls. They want it.

See the full issue for a tour-de-force of mid-century repressed male fetishes, including easy foreign gals, farmers' daughters, "the kitten type", big bottoms and Zsa Zsa Gabor.

F'd Ad Fridays: Vintage "educational" video warns of homosexual dangers

We keep seeing parodies of the old '50s educational films. It's such a well-known trope that I sometimes wonder if the people making them have ever seen an original.

The thing is, those original films are a really special kind of awful, from a time when conformity was considered so essential to society that they had to constantly program kids through propaganda techniques learned in the recent war.

So watch this clip. You'll either laugh or get angry. But you'll have to admit the medium is still a powerful cultural reference, decades later.

Brought to you by the generation who told women breastfeeding was disgusting and primitive

(Click to enlarge and read copy)

That's right! Seven-Up is so pure...so wholesome!

Via The Consumerist