And the award for best illustration of ale with squirrels, accordions, and ascots goes to…
Schlitz! Y’all, this ad did its job. It actually makes me wants Schlitz, despite the fact that I would never order a 4.6% ABV beer because that’s just wasting my time. My mouth tells me to rebuke the “Schlitzness” but my eyes say “Carry on, my wayward daughter.”
Seriously, tell me, doesn’t this look like more fun than a barrel of monkeys?
This kiddo wishes he were ANYWHERE but under the tree with these losers. Perhaps he’s upset because he received a Norma pencil.
At least these parents know how to make their daughter’s Christmas a bright one.
I’d think you could use that pram for a real baby, no?
But the best gift by far is always a car. Especially if it’s a Cadillac.
It’s Stevens Twist Twill, lest ye forget. The red lion. And just in case you’re not familiar with twill, it’s a fabric with ridges. It’s the Ruffles of the material world.
You know how people these days looooove to say how important it is to “start a dialog” about things? How necessary it is for them to “start the conversation”? It makes me want to wretch, that kind of speech. So let’s just have a chit-chat about these manufacturer names, shall we? First off: Jack Tar Togs, that’s brilliant. It sounds like the mascot for a little league team. Go, Jack Tar Togs!
Hit Em Hard seems aggressive, but the list includes many manly names like Big Dad and 5 Brother (forget 5 Sister) and Stur-Dee. Sounds super reliable, right? But then others are more vexing. Pool’s is “swetpruf”? What is that about? That’s not even phonetically-spelled.
It reminds me of Farmer Jack’s advertising ploy. But he does it on PURPOSE. Or purrpuss, shall I say?
And as for Tuf-Nut? Yikes. I’ll take your word for it.
Such a fun opening riff, a soft and easy California feeling. Chewin’ on a piece of grass, walking’ down the road…
Then Jorge stops his strumming to assert that there is no actual Ventura Highway, only Ventura County. But Otilia (the older, haggard woman in the back whose hair is struggling to flee her scalp while she strums the hammock strings) says, “No seas tonto, Jorge” and explains that the actual song was about a young boy standing on the side of the road while his dad changed a flat tire. Get with the program, Jorge. Common knowledge.
Maybe it wasn’t actually Nancy Culp from The Beverly Hillbillies. Did she even play classical guitar? She clearly hated doublenecked guitars.
And while she gained notoriety playing a spinster, she was actually married for 10 years. Per wikipedia, one reviewer said she had the “face of a shriveled balloon, the figure of a string of spaghetti, and the voice of a bullfrog in mating season.” Perhaps that’s a bit harsh. Ribbit.
Ah, yes. In the years before talk of puppy mills and Pit Bulls & Parolees, folks would go to the Pet Shop and actually procure puppies there, not just on the days when the Humane Society pimped strays on Saturdays. Can’t you just smell their little puppy breath and the softness of their puppy heads? This is part of a 1956 ad for Friskies.
Now, I’ve had plenty of dogs in my day, and they all liked meat. Carrots, no. Cabbage, wouldn’t touch it. Celery, forget it. But chicken and beef and pork? Yes. Basically any of the Chipotle proteins, dogs like. Now in case you didn’t skim the ad up top, it says Friskies contains “lean red horse meat.” Yum! Giddyup! So we can safely assume those beagle puppies were into horsemeat. It makes me wonder about Jemima. Jemima was the beagle we lost last year to cancer, and she looked nothing like Snoopy, who is also purportedly a beagle. Even this Pinterest image shows you that Snoopy and beagles have hardly anything in common. But I bet they’d both eat horse meat.
And turkey.
And bacon and eggs.
Maybe, just maybe, they’d both like watermelon for dessert, like this happy beagle.
But then it’s strictly back to horse meat.
I saw this pic and immediately thought of the 1947 poem:
Hold steady to grandma, lest she fall down
Let grass stains stay clear of her three button gown
‘Twill not be flattering should she choose to go prone
Give up the ghost, and leave Grandpa alone
But what of Aunt Doris who clings to the wrist
Of my sweet Cousin Lois who dare not resist
For fear that the lips of Doris get flubbery
As she sobs while Uncle Jim hides behind shrubbery
Has he donned trousers? Hast thou the knowledge?
He only had two years at community college
He lettered in arm wrestling; his grip was quite strong
To his daughter Eleanor, the gene passed along
And now she stands confident, with nary a frown
Holding steady to grandma, lest she fall down.
Even more cliche than those drugstore Father’s Day cards referencing golf and ale consumption and handyman tools, are the ones that show Dad taking a paint roller to his bird’s egg blue brick house and painting it Pepto-Bismol pink.
Okay, so he’s actually painting a pink house blue. That makes more sense. Perhaps Mom just painted it pink a month ago for Mother’s Day, and now it’s HIS day and his color. He gets eleven months of blue, but she only gets four weeks of pink. That’s not fair.
But, really, what’s wrong with the pink? Pink houses were so coveted in the 80s, in fact, that John Cougar Mellencamp even wrote a song about it.
Here he is in the video, excitedly pumping up the cheerleader and sweat-domed, sleeveless buddy whom he had recruited to paint the basic white clapboard house behind him. All hail pink houses! And really, ain’t that America, for you and me?
The ad continues with way more paragraphs than necessary, as was the way back in the day, when people weren’t reading posts on phones and had plenty of time to sit and read a short-story-length ad on paint.
And what mid-century dad didn’t appreciate a can of SPRED Glide-On, not to be confused with Astroglide? Glidden also made a latex wall paint called SPRED Satin, for even fancier fathers.
So maybe Dad didn’t want a pink house for good reason. What do you think? A palace fit for a king? Not even for a vacation house? Sometimes less is more.
I Don't Get It 