1979: O.J. Simpson's 'third leg' sells boots in Playboy #TBT

When I was scanning an old NORML ad for today's Osocio post, I stumbled across this bizarre pre-Photoshop ad for Dingo Boots.

The copy, "the man's all legs" refers to the fact that then (as now) he held the record for the highest single season yards-per-game average in the NFL. But considering this ad was placed in a 1979 Playboy magazine, you have to wonder if the old "third leg" pun was in play.

People younger than me, who only know OJ Simpson from his murder trial, may not realize what a huge deal this man was in the '70s. I still have my original copy of The Book Of Lists that gives the results of an August, 1976, Ladies' Home Journal poll of children's "Top 10 Heroes And Heroines."

Here are the results:

Girls
1. O.J. Simpson
2. Neil Armstrong     
3. Robert Redford
4. Elton John
5. Billie Jean King
6. Mary Tyler Moore
7. John Wayne
8. Chris Evert
9. Katherine Hepburn
10. Henry Kissinger

Boys
1. O.J. Simpson
2. Elton John
3. John Wayne
4. Chris Evert
5. Neil Armstrong
6. Joe Namath
7. Henry Kissinger
8. Robert Redford
9. Gerald Ford
10. Mary Tyler Moore

Times sure have changed.

Thanks to Kerry for the ad

Can this 1974 "Raped by Mick Jagger" ad be real?

It has to be a hoax. I truly hope so, anyway.

I just saw this posted in the Facebook group "1960's and 1970's Advertisements". From there I tracked it back to a post from last June in Anorak. The oldest post I found was on Flickr from 2008.

Does anyone have provenance on this? Claimed to be from a 1974 "rock magazine," it parodies a long-running campaign for Maidenform begun by the William Weintrob Advertising Agency in New York:

Via Blogspot

So, if you combine 1970s political incorrectness, the bad-boy image of the rock press, a cheap shot at consumerism, and a wink at the contemporary rumours about a Bowie-Jagger affair, would you end up with such an ad?

If you have any information about this, please comment below.

1972 Bowie review is a good reminder for all music critics

Via That Eric Alper

Every once in a while, I find it good to remind myself that every new movement in popular music provokes curmudgeonly dismissal. Jazz, country, early rock 'n' roll, funk, electronica, rap, dance... no matter how good an artist is, there's never a shortage of people who simply don't get it.

This news clipping from Memphis in 1972 is one of those reminders:

Via Guerrilla Monster Films

"David Bowie probably could be a talented musician. But his show is not selling music. He has substituted noise for music, freaky stage gimmicks for talent, and covers it all up with volume."

The live album recorded in California slightly later on that tour, long a favourite bootleg for Bowie fans, had its first "official" release in 2008. It has 4.5/5 stars on Allmusic. (Not to mention that the studio album he was touring ranks on almost everyone's all-time "top" lists.)

How many of today's musicians have been described in similar terms? And how will history judge them?

"Go up to a girl and whisper yo-ho-ho"?

I don't think this rum ad has aged very well. "Yo, ho!" is not exactly a winning line in the parlance of our times.

Via 1960's and 1970's Advertisements on Facebook.

This 40-year-old PSA will start your week off with a "WTF"?

If this woman looks familiar, don't be surprised. It's Joanna Cassidy, aka Zhora the Replicant from Blade Runner, aka Dolores from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, aka Margaret from Six Feet Under.

Back in 1973, she was known from a couple of cop films, but not well enough to be named in this Ad Council PSA about forest fires. Instead, her sultry delivery seems to be a generic play on the "sex sells" cliché with a bizarre surprise ending:



Interesting that sex in advertising was already a target for parody forty years ago. And yet many advertisers continue to use women's sexuality to deliver unrelated messages to us with no irony at all.

Via Smokey Bear's YouTube channel.

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 Beatles' Apple is now Apple's Apple

Remember Apple? No, not that Apple. This one:

Via

When I was a kid, in the '70s and early '80s, finding an original Beatles album with the green apple label at a used record store was like finding gold. The iconic brand was founded by The Fab Four themselves as part of Apple Corps Ltd., and was intended not only to publish Beatles albums and singles, but also to sign unknown and deserving talent in music, fashion, even technology.

via

The original "Apple Store" in London, known as the Apple Boutique was a bust, losing so much money that The Beatles closed shop and gave away all the merchandise. The label did much better, signing notable performers such as Mary Hopkin, James Taylor, Badfinger, and Billy Preston (as well, obviously, as being home the most famous band in the world at the time).

Blank apple label signed by James Taylor.
Am I the only one who saw naughty things in it?

The original Apple brand was still going strong with Beatles reissues in 1978, when an upstart computer company, Apple Computer (now Apple Inc.) started using the fruit for its own branding purposes. Apple Corps. sued for trademark infringement, and was awarded $80,000 in 1981. Part of this judgement was Apple Computer's agreement not to distribute music.

When Apple Computers started to offer Midi music functionality in the late '80s, Apple Corps. sued them again and won $26.5 million in 1991. But when the iTunes Music Store and the iPod appeared in 2003, Apple Corps sued again... and somehow lost their case.

Finally, in 2007, the two companies announced a confidential agreement in which ownership of all of the trademarks related to "Apple" (including all  Apple Corps logos) went to Apple Inc. (as Apple Computers was now known) the Corps licensing its trademarks back for continued use. Rumours said that $500 million had changed hands.

From then on, the two brands got along. The Beatles finally came to iTunes, while their 2010 remastered CDs and records from the late '60s featured the familiar green apple.

Yesterday, Cult of Mac announced that "the Canadian IP Office has just disclosed that the Beatles’ iconic recording label is now Apple, Inc. registered trademark."

According to original source, Patently Apple:

The Canadian database records show that there was unsuccessful opposition to Apple owing the logo by a company named Apple Box Productions Sub Inc.. The Canadian IP Office database shows that Apple Inc. has since been granted the registered trademark. As we reported, Apple originally filed for the famed Apple Corps logo trademark in Europe in March 2011.

And so, a '60s brand that was known for losing money and giving stuff away is now owned by a 21st century brand known for being overpriced and proprietary.

Just don't forget, Cupertino, that in the end the love you take is equal to the love you make.

Thanks to Boing Boing for the tip.

This post was written on a MacBook Pro, while listening to Abbey Road on an iPhone 4.

Innocence lost, as seen in a Mr. Bubble ad

I used to love this stuff, when I was his age. Today, you'd never get away with a headline like that without some snarky adblogger taking it the wrong way...

Via Found in Mom's Basement

Have you ever had a bad time in Levi's?

Via Retronaut

In my early copywriting days, I was taught that it was bad form to write a headline in the form of a question. "It makes the audience feel obligated to answer," I was informed, "so think of the worst possible answer they could come up with, and that's how they'll read the ad."

That said, how could anyone have a bad time in such festive pants? Levi's struggled to remain relevant in the '70s, before briefly regaining their dominance in traditional bluejeans in the 1980s.

I spent most of my teens and early 20s in those latter Levi's, and I can say that I did, in fact, have a few bad times in them.

More ads from the campaign here.

I miss the good old days of ugly Lego

This Lego ad, from about 1981, is immensely popular on the internet circa 2012. It, and two others of the same vintage, were recently featured on the academic blog Sociological Images as examples of gender-neutral marketing of children's toys.

SI's Lisa Wade contrasts the Lego of her childhood with today's more gendered Lego sets for girls that put women back in the kitchen:

Or the beauty shop:

Granted, there are lots of different Legos for kids, but this is the one Mastermind Toys lists as "a brand new LEGO world for girls!"

I get it. I only have a son myself, but all of his little girl friends have totally bought into this whole "princess" thing — even though their parents are socially progressive yuppies like me. Kids should be able to (safely and responsibly) play however they want with whatever they have (my son has started making "spy weapons" out of cardboard tubes) so is there really a problem here?

Lisa writes, "In the circles I run in, it’s being roundly criticized for reproducing stereotypes of girls and women: domesticity, vanity, materialism, and an obsession with everything being pastel."

By the way, this controversy is a few months old already. What inspired me to weigh in was an even older Lego image, from a 1973 catalogue, that was featured on Retronaut:

This was around the time when I started playing with the iconic blocks, almost 40 years ago. Note that the craptacular ambulance built by 5-year-old "Maria" could have just as easily been built by "Mario".

And then it hit me what the real problem is.

Lego stopped being a "blank slate" imagination toy sometime in the '80s. While you can still buy plain blocks if you look hard enough, Lego is now much more about getting kids to act out branded and scripted narratives than asking them to start from scratch.

Here's an example. It's the bio of "Emma", one of the Lego Friends:

Favorite animal: Horse, Robin
Hair color: Black
Favorite color: Purple
Favorite food: Fruits and veggies. And chocolate. And cupcakes. And pizza…
I love: Designing clothes and jewelry, crafts, interior decorating, remodeling and horseback jumping.
I’m also good at: Yoga, giving makeovers, martial arts, making origami animals.
My friends think I’m sometimes: Forgetful, but I never forget to accessorize.
I want to be: A designer
Motto: “That’s SO you!”
I would never: Leave home in clothes and accessories that don’t match!
I like to hang out: At the beauty salon and my design studio.

There is literally nothing left to the imagination here.

Toys representing fictional characters with complex backstories existed when I was a kid, too, but not in Lego form. Instead they were "dolls" and "action figures".

I still have mine.

So my question is, should Lego be held to account for defining and gendering the play narrative for its dolls and action figures more than any other toy company?

To be fair, no. Parents do not have to buy these sets for their daughters, and they could well buy kitchen sets for their sons. It's just another company in the business of making money by giving kids (and parents) what they say they want.

I think the real shame here is that a classic toy that engaged children in unique imagination exercises 30 or 40 years ago has become just another product tie-in to increasingly monotonous children's entertainment. And part of this monotony is the cute girlie-girl thing.

I just miss my ugly, impractical Lego machines and houses. And I miss ads that sell nothing more than imagination. But then again, I miss being able to lose myself in a bucket of plastic bricks for an entire afternoon.

There is hope, though. In some places, Lego and its advertising still rock.

Check out this German campaign that shows retro lego geniuses. And this amazing Russian campaign that turns Lego kits into something else. And this fantastically minimalist American one from 2006.

F'd Ad Fridays: McSploitation advertising

Do you find the really awkwardly targeted funk-era McDonald's ad charming, or painful?

(click to enlarge and read copy)

Although McDonald's efforts to reach diverse American consumers haven't become much less awkward in  the last 40 years.

Found in that 1973 Ebony magazine that just keeps giving...

Oh joy oh joy! A button museum!

I try to keep some of my nerdiness to myself, but I can't contain it any longer: I love vintage novelty buttons.

I used to have a great big collection of them (along with pop bottles, and sundry other crap) that I kept in a drawer. Now I'll have to go looking for them, because the Busy Beaver Button Co. has opened an online Button Museum to show off their own treasures.

I found out about this via Buzzfeed, where Buzzer Jesse McNulty posted a collection of buttons from the sexual revolution.

Here are some highlights:

Man oh man. The collection apparently covers all eras and messaging:

I wonder if they'd be interested in my "Junk Food Junkie" or "Ban The Leg-Hold Trap" classics...

F'd Ad Fridays: It's b-a-a-a-d

Via Vintage Ad Browser

You've got to hand it to the 1970s: Subtlety was just not their thing.

F'd Ad Fridays: The most awkward jingle from the '70s?

This bizarre old RC Cola spot from Australia features an impressively unsingable jingle, "unusual hair", bumcrack and sideboob:



Well, okay then.

Ice Bird, Ice Bird, you're such a nice bird....

This was posted on Buzzfeed today as "Worst 70's Novelty Item # 19"



I owned one. It was actually awesome. Come to think of it, Mom, whatever happened to my Ice Bird? It would make one hell of a Daiquiri.