You can go into all the old shops in Beamish.  Here’s a few pics;

Even the prices were right!

The assistant in the Co Op was a lovely German student, who spoke excellent English and was very informative!  All the food labels are printed from the original!

All the buildings are amazing, and the Print shop is no exception.  You can really get a sense of the past in these buildings!

There’s something quite charming about old packaging.  Although the colours are limited, it was still possible for the personalities of these items to shine and jostle with each other.  Some of these brands are still going strong too!

My previous posts about Beamish and the Newcastle trip

More pics from Beamish

Still Beaming about Beamish

Beamish

Art at the Baltic: Sarah Sze ‘Tilting Planet’

St Nicholas Gothic Cathedral

Out and about

Bessie Surtees House

More HERE

After a late lunch at Cochon, we caught a couple of the old warehouse signs, the real CBD gems.

Dixie Machine Welding & Metal Works, Tchoupitoulas

A classic New Orleans summer afternoon sky, to boot.

Am gasit niste add-uri vechi foarte interesante, puteti vedea si mai multe aici.

Din prima categorie, SMOKING.

Din categoria ARME SI FLORI

Un Craciun de tinut minte cu Daisy Guns!

Tot cu motive de Craciun… How creepy can you be to put a Merry Christmas tag to the barrel of a gun?!?!!

Siguranta inainte de toate.

Din categoria CREEPY KIDS

Inocenta furata… sau Love Cosmetics?!

Asta da fidelitate a consumatorului…

O abordare mai sinistra a intrebuintarii vopselelor…

…10 beri!!!

No comment…

Si din categoria COCAINA, HEROINA SI ALTE STUPEFIANTE…

Look at the face!!!!…

I was at a diner in a rural area over the weekend and saw that the counters and the tables were all covered in this:

Does anyone remember when these were part of the motif of Wendys?  I remember it SO clearly as a child, all the tables, counters, and even the paper that the burgers came in was covered in these old school ads.  Back when they had an old-fashioned theme.  Anyone?  Does anyone remember this?  Anyone?  I’m kinda obsessed with ads from the 30s through the 50s, and I think this may be why.

OK, tell me you didn’t know exactly what this post was going to be about just from that title.

J returned some of his duplicate birthday gifts, and we suggested Connect Four as one of the replacements (and at something like $7, what I think is a real value). So far he and N are having more fun just dropping checkers in than actually playing it, but he’ll get there. I had picked up a knock-off travel version as a business trip gift last year, and they liked playing with that (N more than J, actually), although some of the tiny travel pieces did end up getting sacrificed to the heating vent gods, and it really isn’t the same as the real thing).

It was interesting to see that while the game is basically the same, they have made some improvements in the game in the last, oh, 25 years. For example, where previously the playing board (board?) was just held up in the air by the two side pieces, there are now pieces to connect all the way around, forming a circular base that does a pretty good job of keeping the “checkers” from rolling off the table and scattering all over the place at the end of the game. (“Checkers” is in quotes because they’re not really checkers any more, like I remember them being. Or were they never checkers?)

The one change that is taking a little getting used to is that you no longer end the game by flipping up the bottom bar. It now slides sideways. At first I was really nostalgic for the old way (probably largely because of the commercial), but the more I thought about it, I do seem to recall a fair amount of accidental (or purposeful, depending on who was playing) premature spilling of the checkers.

Regardless, nice, mostly quiet, fun for the family.

Link: Connect Four

So, I don’t know what year this would have been?

Maybe, 19-Oh-Racist?

The message seems clear. You want to get rid of rats, mice, bedbugs, flies or roaches? Buy a box of chinamen for 15 cents! They will eat you out of your problem. Ugh.

We are making fun of the diets of coolie-hat wearing asians, right? Good work agency du jour! 

But for in-depth analysis, let’s consult the expert…

Some say he invented the infomercial, but he has repeatedly denied it, although never under oath.  Others say he abhors tomato juice, but loves a Bloody Mary.  No matter, he is the Doctor, and he is preferred by your provider.

This ad uses the symbol for cents – try finding that on a modern keyboard!  But anyway, if you read it the way it seems to be written you get, “ROUGH ON RATS IT CLEARS OUT RATS MICE BED BUGS FLIES ROACHES 15 (cents) PER BOX.  That is not first-rate copy.  It’s not even up to, pentultimate copy. It is crap.

I might be able to buy that it kills rats, mice, bed bugs (whatever those are) and flies, but nothing kills roaches (Doc Ad’s lived everywhere, including the South).  At least, nothing kills roaches for long.  Oh, and what is the product name?  Is it ROUGH ON RATS?

So, that’s all the comments on the goofy ad copy, now let’s just think about the visual concept here.

First, you have a dead rat flat on his back.  Got it. This stuff kills vermin. 

 But then, there’s added what appears to be a walking Chinese man with two dead rats, one of which is heading in to his mouth.  And he looks a bit overweight, so I from what I can discern, the implication is that he has been eating a bunch of rats, and maybe dipping them in Ranch, or possibly Blue Cheese. 

Is the story that this product kills vermin as well as a Chinese person because they like to dine on rats? 

Wow. 

And I thought the world was screwed up these days, but apparently we were all just a bunch of racist, stereo-typing, biggoted asses back then.

Doc Ad took an oath to do everything in his power to save any ailing ad, but this ad is too far gone.  I suggest pulling the plug, and call it a day.  See you the next time I make my rounds.  Doc Ad has left the building. Off to sup on anything other than vermin. And top it off with a nice dry martini.

So, tough sell…trying to make a language course into a sexy, interesting or otherwise note-worthy advert.

Hu-zzah! Learn On The Go language courses.

Body copy reads:

“They Used to Sacrifice People Here – If they start old habits, wouldn’t you like to talk them out of it?”

If this isn’t exactly racist, then at the very least it’s xenophobic. I’m not sure about the origins of this ad but I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if it were British. It smacks of their imperialistic disdain for the natives. Tut, Tut.

The alarms sounds (a scantily clad native bellows on his conch shell (Ahh-OOO-gah!)) beckoning to him and out from his hut stumbles… DOC AD!

Some say he is completely impervious to blinking during flash photography.  Other’s believe his fear of the barbaric comes from an over-zealous, shabbily-bearded Santa during a trip to Macy’s when he was a mere lad.  Either way, he’s all the doctor you need.  Not Dr. Suess and surely not Doctor Johny Fever (The Doc of Rock).  Not Dr. J.  Not Doctor Zivago. Not Dr. Pepper.  Not Dr. Nick (Hi everybody!)  And not even Dr. Z of DaimlerChrysler.  I’m talking about the one, the only…DOCTOR ADVERTISING!

When I look at this ad, I just have to think campaign.  Most creatives develop three to five executions (good pun, right?) so that the ads can be rotated throughout the media schedule.  The Absolute vodka print had about 325,000 executions, but that idea had legs.  This one…small legs.  Tiny legs. Legs like a dachshund.  Or maybe a small spider, with less legs. Anyway, by itself, the ad is semi-funny in that racist/insensitive/ethnocentric way that Americans (and mostly the British) enjoy.  But, you take this idea and a few more just like it, mount them oversized on a large black board, and et viola…now you have something much bigger. Much bigger. A freakin’ campaign.  Maybe even an award-winning campaign (I’ve seen worse). 

You see, a mediocre idea will get called-out and shot-down faster than first-class airfares on a travel estimate.  But then you add a few more mediocre ideas to it and it starts to seem like it must be good.  The cumalative effect is “there is a solid idea here and we’d be fools not to buy it.”   

I wonder if the creative team even researched to see if the concept is historically accurate?  Not bloody likely.  And could that headline get any longer or be more of a tongue twister?  That is a lot of words.  Absolute only needed two, and one of them was the brand name.

And what’s up with the glowing iPod in the corner.  Is that a divine iPod?  Is it radioactive? Or is that simply a modern interpretation on the classic starburst?  I go with the latter. (Or is it latt-ist ?).

Overall, this ad isn’t going to die – t’s not terminally bad.  It’s just overweight, get’s no excercise, and doesn’t really eat very well. Get some rice cakes and running shoes and we’ll see you at your next check-up.

Now, Doc Ad’s gotta find the nude beach around here. And some sort of drink with an umbrella in it.

See you suckers next week.

Are you a go-getter? Got things to do? Places to be? Well, then Old Crow is the liquid depressant for you. Stop Ambition in it’s tracks. You don’t want to be tied down with a job, a mortgage, or responsibilities, do you? Take up a life drinking and those worries will be a thing of the past.

Another solid ad from the world of hard liquor. Old Crow is clearly positioning itself as the liquor for those on the go. (A niche market that may exhaust itself too quickly).

I wish the tagline had been “The Out On The Town, During the Day Bourbon”

Unfortunately, the ad doesn’t show what these two scamps got into after getting their high from Mr. Old Crow; an afternoon spent tagging buildings and other public property that my taxes are now going to have to pay to clean up. Thanks, Miscreants! These hooligans are gonna be begging me for my hard-earned spare change by day’s end. I’m already getting worked up by these two shirkers!

I saw a post on Digg today about old computer ad’s. It was quite funny, but I decided to look for a site with a few more ad’s than that post. Here is a great site which has some really old but good computer ad’s. I love the Radio Shack ones with Isaac Asimov.

Enjoy.

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Dopo le retrospettive di advertising gustate alla Notte dei Pubblivori di Milano, mi è nata la smania di ricercare vecchi spot on line.

Ho provato vari tag (old ad, vintage ad e simili…) ed i risultati sono stati entusiasmanti.