F'd Ad Fridays: Jello Green Grotto Salad

No, this is not an Urban Dictionary euphemism for an unspeakable sexual act. But perhaps it should be.

Via Sociological Images.

F'd Ad Fridays: Champale

Enough said.

F'd Ad Fridays: White kosher wine makes you see double

Rarely has booze advertising been so honest. I found this ad in a Google Books scan of a 1973 Ebony magazine.

How to make money writing short paragraphs (in the days before Twitter)

This unprovenanced ad for piecework copywriters was posted on BoingBoing. I'd love to repurpose it the next time we're hiring word people. "No tedious study."

What he's actually doing is selling you a series of books on writing for things like greeting cards and (I assume) tiny classified ads. If you're interested, there's a box of them on Ebay right now.

Ironically, there is also a long copy advertorial version I found here.

A Google search also turned up this one in an early-70s issue of Ebony:

Note that the Ebony insertion lacks Barrett's creepy mug, unlike this one in a 1973 Bangor Daily.

F'd Ad Fridays: 43-year-old Afri-Cola ad will blow your mind

Illegal Advertising posted this wonderfully F'd bit of vintage awesome:



It's by the late Charles Paul Wilp, a German adman who combined his interests in art and aerospace to create this really trippy ad. They sure don't make 'em like they used to.

F'd Ad Fridays: The Pope shills for cocaine wine

Via Cracked

19th century Pope Leo XIII was such a big fan of Mariani wine (a patent medicine made of Bordeaux and coca leaves) that he awarded a Vatican gold medal to the wine, and also appeared on a poster endorsing it.

Talk about high holiness...

F'd Ad Fridays: Blood in the water

There aren't many Friday ads that I can share with my 7-year-old son, but this one he will love. "The real blood bleeding minnow". Awesome.

Via BoingBoing

F'd Ad Fridays: Now with more Jordache than you can shake your ass at

I don't know if any of the rest of you clicked on the 1980 Jordache jeans spot that popped up as a reco after playing their '70s ad embedded in a previous post. I just now did:



Jordache was know in the '70s for being focussed on how tight they were on the bum.

Which is fine with adults. But translating the slogan and the ass shots to a classroom full of kids? And their teacher?

Times sure have changed. Although in the interest of full disclosure, I had myself a pair of those things on my prepubescent butt within a year after this ad was made.

Have a great weekend, all.

FEMEN-ized communist propaganda posters

I'll admit it—although I am occasionally critical or sarcastic about their tactics, I am a FEMEN fanboy. And it's not just for the obvious reasons. They keep coming up with interesting and artistic ways to get their message across.

This collection of altered Soviet-era propagada posters, shared on their Google+ page, present the Ukrainian activist cause with a wink and a smirk.

Ukraine is not a brothel!

Youth to the stadiums!

People's dreams come true!

Good my beauty - all at the show will enjoy!

Milkmaids, achieve good yields of milk from each cow

Cultural serviced every visitor!

Give us a breast size?

Come, comrade, to our Femen!

All world records must be ours

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.

F'd Ad Fridays: Supersexy Swingin' Sixties Branding

The Polaroid Swinger was the first affordable instant camera, creating a whole world of opportunities for personal photography. It was also a huge enabler for amateur porn. As with the digital revolution decades later, it cut prying photo lab guys out of the picture.

How aware was Polaroid of what people were doing with its product behind closed doors?

Watch these ads and decide for yourself.





Happy Friday, everyone.

F'd Ad Fridays: Now a woman can sharpen a pencil

The problem is that once she has a sharp pencil, she can write things with it. Or maybe just stab you in the nards.

Via BoingBoing

It's a shame the company wasn't called "B A Dick", as that would be more appropriate.

F'd Ad Fridays: Original Awkwardness by Munsingwear

Original Penguin is one of my favourite shirt brands. And the brand has made lots of adblogs this week and last with this cool retro video of a car jumping rope:



But the company behind the Penguin brand, Munsingwear, doesn't have quite as awesome a history as they let on.

For one thing, it made its name as an underwear company. For another, it made hilariously unitentional homoerotic ads like this:

Via Flikr

It also perpetrated fashion crimes against humanity, like this:

And more homoeroticism...

All Via

And... ummm...

Via eBay

Happy weekend, everyone.

F'd Ad Fridays: Ayds helps you lose weight

You can tell they branded this long before the '80s.

Via Flikr

F'd Ad Fridays: Remember when Farrah was "more of a cougar than ever before"?

I also love the line "sporty cougar wagon". Except that now thy tend to drive minivans.

I would also like to add: I really miss Farrah.

F'd Ad Fridays: Unintentionally fabulous vintage navy recruitment poster

This example is from a great post on Sociological Images, which points out, "Only after an active gay liberation movement made homosexuality more visible did people actually start to look for [the stereotypes] in people they knew."

Or did the ad artist play a big joke on all of us? After all, it is an ad asking men to go down for seamen...

Some sweet retro work for vintage clothing

When I was a teen in 1980s Kingston, Ontario, going vintage clothing shopping in Toronto was kind of a "thing". So this nice bit of work in I Believe in Advertising gave me a smile:

I was in the market for skinny ties myself, but it reminded me of some old friends.

There are three more ads in this series from Grey, TO, but they're not as elegant. See them at IBIA.

F'd Ad Fridays: Grounds for divorce

This supercut of old coffee ads puts a spotlight on the onetime acceptance of men being total dicks and women defining themselves through domestic talents:



At least, I hope it's no longer acceptable.

Via  Reddit

It's 1979 all over again in advertising land

I'm (just) old enough to have gone to roller skating parties without irony.

To have (poorly) skateboarded on a plastic deck.

To have thought that this movie looked pretty cool:



I am also old enough to have watched older kids declare that Disco Sucks, and to recall that at my last roller disco birthday party, we skated to "Crazy Train" and "You Shook Me All Night Long".

But hey, times change. Younger people, living without embarrassing disco-era family photos, are free to relive the 1970s Venice Beach roller disco scene without shame.



But I have to admit, when I see those skates, socks and shorts, the commercial reminds me too much of this:



As long as I never have to wear nad-squeezing '70s ADIDAS shorts again, though, I'm happy.

May the vaccinations be with you. Always.

When I was a kid, and Star Wars was still shiny and new, Lucasfilm lent out the cheaper characters for TV Public Service Announcements against drunk driving and smoking.

This doctor's office poster, however, just seen on Reddit, is new to me:

It's obviously an old one, but with the anti-vaccination movement and the renaissance of measles, perhaps it's time for a sequel.