One Night In A Novelty Catalog

Hey folks, it's time once again for one of my wacky animations that makes this blog so popular with the hoi polloi.

The animation is inspired by this months theme of April Fools...


One Night in a Novelty Catalog from David Witt on Vimeo.

I used a 1992 Johnson Smith Company catalog in case there was anyone who might have wondered.

Do you believe in TV Magic?

In my last post I wrote about the "Giant Surprise Catalog of  Professional Magic," and so I thought I might as well continue with that magic theme.

From age five to about twelve I was very interested in magic. Hardly a birthday or Christmas went by without a gift of some sort of new magic trick. My very first trick was a deck of TV Magic Cards.  An advanced magic trick for a five year old I know, but this was due to the frequent commercials featuring magician Marshall Brodien in the 1970's...



At that young age I remember thinking magic was real.  So when I was given the deck I thought the cards were enchanted. It was a cold slap of reality when I quickly learned it was just a trick, and magicians were basically just pretending.  I think magic could probably be used for teaching children logic and critical thinking.

After the TV Magic Cards I received other magic sets by Marshall Brodien, and this is how I got this booklet, Fifty TV Magic Tricks which has a good selection of easy tricks for beginners...

Read the first page "How To Be A Magician."  Maybe if I had stuck with magic beyond the start of adolescence I too could have been the "life of the party"...

Here's a trick (and it's not truly a magic trick, unless you consider a flambé magic) that wouldn't be found in a magic book today that could be read by children...

Booze and fire? Remember kids, don't try this at home - go to a neighbors house!

Lastly, a different kind of "TV magic," I remember being a big fan of this 70's syndicated magic show called Wonderful World of Magic hosted by Bill Bixby...



Extra big bonus points to anyone reading who can remember this show.  IMDb doesn't even list it.

Vick Lawston's Giant Surprise Catalog of Professional Magic

In the spirit of April Fools I thought I'd do a few posts this month about novelties, magic tricks and top it off with a little "fun" original animation.

Inspiration for my April Fools animation came from a skit on Joel Hodgson's The TV Wheel.  The TV Wheel was a ingenious "experiment" from 1995 that unfortunately never got beyond a pilot.  The sketch is "Vick Lawston's Giant Surprise Catalog of Professional Magic."  Paul Feig plays Vick Lawston, and Joel is supposedly the voice of Pumpernickel the monkey. Please watch the sketch below starting at 1:32...




Until I wrote this post I had always assumed that Vick Lawston was a fictional character created for the sketch, but to my 'giant surprise' he and the "Giant Surprise Catalog of  Professional Magic" are 100% real....

Gee, I feel like I'm the last to know. I sure wish I had a copy of that catalog.  The few scans of some of pages I've seen online look priceless.  Vick's son Jeff, who's in the reflective tape business, has a small page devoted to his late father right here. It's the most "official" Vick Lawston site you will find on the interweb. 

Geauga Lake

I haven't posted a brochure in a long while, so let's take a look at this 1978 brochure for the now defunct Geauga Lake amusement park in Aurora, Ohio...

 As you can see 1978 was the first year for the Corkscrew.  The Internet tells me the Corkscrew lasted from 1978 to 1995.  The roller coaster now resides in India at an amusement park called MGM Dizzee World where it's reportedly been re-named "Roller Coaster."

 

Admission in 1978 was $6.50, and adjusted for inflation that's only $23.15 in 2013 dollars.  How many amusement parks in North America have an admission of less than $25 today?   

The Madness of March

What am I going to post this month?

I've gotten in the habit of using a holiday to guide my posts for the given month, and this month we have both Saint Patrick's Day and Easter.  How is one to pick a fitting theme with these competing holidays. They've sorta canceled each other out in my mind. Although it's not that I'm sitting on a amazing stash of fascinating Saint Patrick's Day and Easter related stuff either.

Maybe I could use this post to rant about the upcoming daylight saving time.  It's nothing but a pain.  A quick word to the world leaders and captains of industry who I know are fervent readers of this blog - isn't it about time we pulled the plug on this nonsense people?

Hey speaking about "rich and powerful" readers, I suspect many famous comic artists read my blog also.  For example how many saw the comic strip Lio by Mark Tatulli that ran on Sunday February 17, 2013...

Now check out the blog post I made on December 5, 2007.  It was about homemade Christmas cards I made back in 1990...

Card Front

Inside

I'm sure it's totally a coincidence, or possibly a homage.  

Well back to figuring out what the heck I'm going to post for the rest of the month.

Love Finds a Way

I'm thinking maybe I should have ran this post about "woman attraction systems" last week. It may have helped some hapless schmoe looking for a Valentine's Day date since most of these products are still on the market.

There's no doubt countless products out there to help the loveless, and one could probably devote a whole blog devoted to such materials.  Here's just a few of them...

How to Pick Up Girls! is a pretty famous 1970 book by Eric Weber.  As the 1980 ad below states it was even turned into a 1978 TV movie staring Desi Arnaz Jr..  But wait there's more, the sequel How to Pick Up Women is also available, and if you order both books 100 Best Opening Lines is yours free... 

Not good with the pick up? How about trying hypnosis, or something called S/A Hypnotism to be exact. Here's a 1980 ad (with a 1976 copyright) for book called The Easy Way to get Girls: Through S/A Hypnotism, and be sure to ask for your free "3-D Photo Book' of beautiful girls.  Personally I hope they are more beautiful than the model in the center of the ad.  That's one seriously unflattering shot...

If the "pickup" and hypnosis doesn't work there's always a love potion.  This love potion is "Europe's sexual breakthrough" and a cologne called "SUBMIT." It gets its mojo from"Pheromone Prime." The odd photo of the woman in this 1992 ad looks like she's trying to hide behind her own hair is curious.  I don't think properly conveys how this "SUPER STIMULANT" is supposed to work...

Here's a unique one, a cassette tape that seduces women.  It works through the use of subliminal messages, although obviously one must get a woman someplace to hear it first which may be easier said than done.  From 1992 it's the Mephisto Cassette...

Lastly is a little something from a 1990's Johnson Smith Company catalog.  First get back to the basics with How To Kiss With Confidence.  Going only from the photo, part of the "confidence" must come from kissing someone who looks like you.  Seriously, I thought that guy was kissing a mirror at first. Second is How To Pick-Up Beautiful Girls.  I think I'd buy this over How to Pick Up Girls!  you know, simply because of the "beautiful" part...

All this talk of attracting woman and love potions reminds me of a classic episode of  The Twilight Zone called The Chaser.  This same story was also done later on Tales From the Crypt, but the "Zone" did it the best with much better writing and acting.  I love the Professor A. Daemon character and his surreal library and "glove cleaner."

Just because I can, I've embedded entire episode below...

For Scent-imental Reasons

I thought I'd take a look at the selling of men's fragrances over the past decades, and how it's changed.

Perfumes, colognes and aftershaves frequently use some sort of sexy ad campaign. My interest was see if I pinpoint the moment when sex was first used to sell men's fragrance products.

I can say with almost complete confidence sex was never used to sell men's fragrances in the 1950's. For example this commercial from 1957 for Old Spice aftershave emphasizes health and value...



I hope you're sitting down, but sex in men's fragrance ads seems to start sometime in the late 1960's.  Shocking, I know.  In 1960 Old Spice was still sold like this...

... and it's not sexy in the slightest.  Then whole sexual revolution thing happens, and in 1967 we have a spicy ad like this for Centaur "Massage" Cologne...

I can't personally identify with that breaded guy, but I do like the idea of a beautiful and extra busty personal masseur.

The male in this next 1968 ad for St. Johns cologne is much easier to identify with...

The above ad demonstrates a sexy two pronged marketing attack that many ads like this take.  First there's a handsome male model that can make one think, "If I use this product I could be like this guy."  Second is the use of this product will make one irresistible to the opposite sex.  St. Johns has helped the guy above snag three hot blonds - that's a lot of bang for your buck so to speak.

The Hai Karate commercial below from the late 60's is a classic example of the "irresistible to the opposite sex" marketing campaign...



I think that's still very funny today.

English Leather was introduced in 1949, and by 1969 advertised with this suggestive slogan...

Here's a entertainingly epic one, the very subtly named Jovan Sex Appeal from 1978 with art super manly fantasy art by Frank Frazetta...

...and the extra awesome commercial animated by Richard Williams.


By 1979 Old Spice got sexy with their bedroom couple advertisement for Musk For Men...

I like this two page tease from the makers of English Leather.  On the left side of the page is a sexy model wrapped in a large flannel shirt with the "cool" Timberline...

On the right page we get the "hot" pay off with Wind Drift...

I'm strangely fascinated by the scenario in this Paco Rabbane ad from 1984...

The clunky soap opera dialog ad copy is a hoot.  The guy in the towel must be some sort of wealthy classical musician.  I don't think someone living on the average metropolitan symphony wage could afford such a fancy big city apartment.   Below is the ad copy for easy reading, and print out. It's my hope this scene will be acted out in drama classes around the world, and might even become the next hot YouTube meme...

Hello?

I hope you sit on a lute!

Ah, the sweet song of the morning
grouch!

You didn’t say goodbye.

I didn’t want to wake you.

Who could sleep when there's a hunk
with no clothes on wandering around
at five in the morning, humming
Vivaldi and knocking over furniture?

You have an ear of tin. It was Bruch.
And I’m playing it this afternoon
up in Boston for the Ladies of the
Noble Order of Sweater-and-Pearls.
What are you doing?

Lying here, thinking of you. You
know, I can smell your Paco Rabanne.
It’s like you were still here.

I wish I were.

I couldn’t go back to sleep, remembering 
everything. I wanted to hear
your voice. It has the most interesting
effect on me . . .

Maybe I should run over and read you
a bedtime story or something.

Or something. 

...and end scene.

I hope you all have fun with that.

Jumping to the present day with AXE body spray, and their newish commercial that sorta reminds me of the old Hai Karate spots taken to a spectacular scale...


This BOD Man Fragrance Spray commercial has that "sexy two pronged marketing attack" thing going on.  Is the setting a hotel?  I associate an ice machine with a hotel, but either way this guy didn't break a sweat to get great results...


The packaging for BOD is curious. It looks like I might find it down the supermarket cleaning aisle.  Maybe BOD could replace my bottle of Formula 409, and be my new personal fragrance.  Hmmm, that reminds me of product from an old SNL skit that was two things in one...


Hey since I started this post with Old Spice let's take a look a current magazine ad...

Their ad agency has gone totally insane.  Is insanity the new sexy?

Well let's close this post with probably the best manly cologne commercial ever. All the way from Japan it's Charles Bronson for Mandom. If you've made it this far, and you've never seen this before you're in for a real treat...