Old Ads and Car Colours

Do you remember when cars were painted bright, unusual colours? I sure do. As a little kid in England in the early 1980s, the bleak climate and greyish urbanized infrastructure was contrasted nicely by the warm tones and hues of the cars that trundled along the roads. Not that I made this observation at the time, of course. What, you expected me to draw mental parallels between the climate, car colours and the national mood when I'd barely started school? Are you crazy or something? But I digress. It was almost as if car manufacturers decided to brighten dull landscapes by making their cars stand out against them, rather than just metal boxes you sat in to get from 'A' to the dole office.

Take a look at this British motoring magazine, rather unambiguously titled Motor, from June 1976. Now I hadn't been born at that time, but the cars you see above were typical of what was being driven around England when I was a kid.

Phwooarr, get a load o' that son. That's what I'd probably call an autumn palette (June isn't exactly autumn, but whatever): moss green, olive green, a sort of sunburnt orange...those were great colours! Nice and vibrant. Now, you're probably thinking if all car colours stood out then none of them did, right? Well, colours like these were contrasted by the older cars in subtle pastel shades. In the '80s it was still common to see 1950s cars (and older) still pressed into service and still in use.

The cover stars of this February 1972 issue of Auto Car feature in burgundy and metallic blue, two very popular colours at one time. You could expect to see cars in just about every colour in England, but it was said that the least popular colour was brown. (Hey, what's wrong with brown, eh?) You would supposedly have more trouble trying to sell a brown car than any other colour, because it was seen as an old man's car colour. Brown is also the least popular car colour in Australia. And yet my dad's first car in England was a chocolate-brown Ford Cortina, and his first car in Australia was a tan brown Ford Cortina. So there you go.

Fast forward four decades, now to Melbourne. Here is the view from the food court — sorry, the food gallery — of The Glen shopping centre in Glen Waverley.

Rather uninspiring, isn't it? No, not Springvale Road, though that certainly has its critics. I'm talking about the uninspiring array of car colours you see there. It seems that these days, cars and vans come in nothing other than black, white, grey, red and blue. The bog-standard basics. Boring. Dull. Listless. Apathetic. There's nothing wrong with these colours, but the palette surely couldn't be limited and constrained more than this. 2020s Melbourne has several similarities with 1980s England, but I wish they'd copied their car colours as well. If you lament the demise of variety in car colours too, let me know in the comments.

Oh, and I promised you old ads, so here's one out of the above issue of Auto Car. It follows the usual 1980s trend of paragraphs of text to read through, but it also features this product shot of ye olde smug Triumph owner pulling into a service station to collect his petrol stamps. Though I think he's collecting more than just stamps here if you know what I mean, and I think you do. If you can figure out what transaction is taking place in this picture, put your answer on a postcard and send it to me at the address given in the ad, no later than March 1972.

Ads From The Old Days — Part 3: TV Times

After a nearly seven year hiatus, it's time to take another look at old print advertisements! For those of you who missed my first two posts on the subject back in 2013, and I suspect each and every one of you, catch up on Part 1 and Part 2. Go ahead, I'll wait.

Read 'em both? Good. The ads I'll be looking at today are from this issue of TV Times from the UK, issue dated August 8, 1981.

Hey, that's Joanna Lumley on the cover. How fascinating. If you're not familiar with TV Times, it was (and is) Britain's television guide (I think it had radio listings as well). In 1981 it cost twenty pence, as you can see.

Prince Charles and Princess Diana had just got married, so you can bet there was a lot of coverage of that in there. Let's not make any comment about how that all ended up and move on.

If you've read my previous post about old ads, you'll recall me saying that 1980s print ads, in the UK at least, were unnecessarily wordy. That's not a bad thing as such, it was just an advertising trend I suppose. The ads would frequently have several paragraphs of text "setting the scene" about why the product should be procured by YOU. In this case: a tin of cat food. The copy states that cats are "only human". Better go back and study some biology, 9-Lives copywriters. You too can get a whopping five pence off with this coupon. Hey, that was a lot of money in 1981. Really? Nah.

Hmm, Philadelphia. The spreadable cream cheese was big in England in the '80s, and adorned many a snack table at a dinner party where the women wore shoulder pads and whatnot. Well, I assume so. There's a lot to catch your eye in this 'spread', haw haw!

This Clarks Commandos shoe ad makes elongated mention of the special way the soles were designed, because it is indeed germane to the product under discussion. If you'd rather not read about this then clearly you have no sole.

And here's the last one: a full-page ad for a six-pound handbag that has a novella's worth of text on it. If you don't know every single detail about this bag after reading it, such as the designer's dentist's name or the name of the factory where the metal studs were manufactured then I don't know what I can do for you.

Ads From The Old Days – Part 2: Cookery

In this second post in this series looking back on old magazine ads, we look at these food, drink and cooking-related ads from the mid-1980s. All of these came from two issues of A La Carte, an up-market British cookery and gourmet magazine, one from 1985 and one from 1986.

I found these ads interesting because they had one thing in common. Back then, apparently, ad writers favoured lengthy copy. Sometimes whole pages full of paragraphs. Huge blocks of text for the shoulder-padded public to wade through. Perhaps in the '80s people had more time to peruse lengthy writings about each product. Perhaps ad writers now are just lazy and slap a web address in, figuring the potential customer will find out the product gen in their own time. Both theories have their adherents.

I've arranged the ads below in order from least to most wordy. The word count for each one is given. (Yes, I'm sad enough to count all the words.) Also the photos aren't great. What, you expect me to scan all these?

Only 32 words in this ad for a brandy-like drink but I included it purely for the photo of the couple at the bottom. This is how sophisticated people hooked up in the '80s, kids.

This bacon ad has only 95 words, quite brief for the '80s but still too verbose by today's standards. I only included it because it's worded in such a strange way. Perhaps bacon brought out the copywriter's poetic side?

95 words again, and they're all in French, which is unusual – or maybe the readership were assumed to be bilingual. Hey, it was 28 years ago, what do you want? I like the expression on the woman's face as she listens to Monsieur Beaujolais there bang on about dejeuner. People were more polite in the '80s, too.

With that huge tagline at the top, the paragraph doesn't look much, but it's still 140 words all in. Ah, clean electric power. I wish my stovetop looked like that.

A 'wedding photo album' format gives this ad for falling-down juice some charm. More charm than those who consume the product, at any rate. Only a small paragraph at the top, but the photo captions bump the word count up to 142.

I had to include this close-up of one of those pics above. Saucy stuff, eh? Of course, weddings are boring, but at least you might see things like this once the ordeal's over.

Amidst the rows of teacups the eye has to run the length of this double page spread and back four times to get through this 150-word essay. Is it worth it? Well read the thing and find out!

Now we're into 'more text than images' territory – something that is almost non-existent now. 163 words to get through here.

The photo dwarfs the copy but there's still 166 words about bread here. Hey, I made some bread today. Ain't that somethin'.

The 168 words here take the form of a poem. A unique approach, and this was on the inside cover, but would you read it all? (I did.)

Big pic on the left, 178 words on the right. The whole 'flowers' thing is just odd.

Another one from Cook Electric; 183 words. You do use an electric cooker, right? I hate cooking, so don't ask my opinion.

Ouch, diving into a grapefruit would sting your eyes to buggery. Don't try it. Despite a very eye-catching large image, they crammed 201 words into this one.

Interesting copy, but very long at 233 words. Most of the items being touted here are de rigueur these days. Everyone's got one of those cheese slicer things. I still like it though; there's a certain charm in the way this ad cheerfully extols the virtues of various kitchen utensils. This could also be the only place where the word 'aluminiuming' appeared in print.

As you get through this 316-word essay, try not to get hungry by looking at that cake.

Get comfy, you're up for a 442-word story about tea. I find it interesting, but then I drink tea every day, and don't mind learning about how this company got started. Also, really old photos draw the eye. The one here is from 1902.

And clocking in at a massive 461 words is this ad giving all the info you ever needed about this whisking blender thingy. Everything it does is plainly stated here, if you've got the time to get through it. Can you imagine a print ad with this much text now? No, everyone's too busy playing with themselves to take the time to get clued in on a product they are considering buying. Must distract them with brightly-coloured fluff. Also, iPhones really aren't all that great. Buy a blender instead.

Ads From The Old Days – Part 1: Video Games

In this first instalment looking at print advertising from the past, I examine a variety of video game ads dating from 1992 to 1995. I know I've referred to it as "the old days" in this post's title, but it was a couple of decades ago now. Personally I can remember those years clearly, but if you weren't born yet, I suppose they really are the old days. Although the great god Google Analytics (whom all of us Blogspot drones are beholden to) can tell us accurate stats about our viewers, it cannot tell us how old they are, so "old days" it is. Still, away with such small talk. Let's take a look at how they used to sell stuff in the British gaming press back then.

This is what passed for video game promo in 1994, kids. Now, you'd have screenshots galore, release date prominent, and a nicely Photoshopped logo, with a URL in there maybe. But back then – console logos, game title, stock art of the main character. Done. Next.

Haha, "cruisin' for a squeaky voice". It's funny 'cause 'e's gonna cut yer nadgers orf with a pair of garden shears. Anyway, what stands out to me about this one is that "Gus The World's Greatest Gamer" clearly rips off was inspired by Fido Dido, a character created about 8 years before Gus threatened to castrate those who only moderately liked Flashback.

Sega's handheld console, the Game Gear, could be turned into a portable TV. Good reception not guaranteed, of course. What's interesting here is that the kid is watching Blaze Glory which, if you click to enlarge, can be seen to be rated 'AO'. (That's 'adults only', the early '90s Australian equivalent of the M-rating.) Beats me why a kid in 1993 would be watching an old Western film from 1969 on a Game Gear screen, but who am I to question the machinations of the Sega propaganda department?

"The throbbing power between your legs" eh, let's not 'ave any of that sort of talk 'ere lads, there might be ladies present. Ha! As if. Anyway, if you once again click to enlarge and look closely, you'll see that the joypad ports on the front of the console have nothing plugged into them. Which makes me wonder where the joypad is actually plugged in. Let's wonder no further and move on.

I have no idea what this means.

Sometimes advertisements take the form of a comic strip. Nearly all the time they are cringe-worthy and incredibly puerile. There aren't many ways to disguise blatant propaganda in comics, so these ones cheerfully admit they are shameless sales tools (like their creators) and get on with the job. In any case the above is a typically cheeseballeriffic example, appearing in the very mag it was advertising, and it seems whoever put it there also saw fit to print it on the other side of the very same page.

Another example of how not to do comic strip advertising, although this one is done in fumetti style. Whoever did the layout decided to dispense with the dull rigours of having the speech balloons follow in logical order from left to right. Whatever. If you ever see 'Great Guy', give him a slap 'round the face from me.

Now this is how it's done. The then-Tottenham Court Road Computer Exchange got cartoonist Charlie Brooker to do this strip, entitled Here's Toby!!, for a year or so. There was a new one each month – none of this recycled strip nonsense. Anyway, this one has it all. Bizarre mood swings, psychotic behaviour, mindless violence and gags that were funny. There should have been a whole mag of this stuff; I'd've bought it!

"Right people, we need a Lego Technic slogan for 1995. Any ideas?"
*tumbleweed blows by*
*87 years pass*
"What about you, Poncingtonthorpethwaite?"
"Um...how about...'It's Technofunctionomical'?"
"No, that won't do at all. It's not a word, and it's stupid. Anything else?"
*long silence*
"Right, I guess we'll go with that then. By the way, what's 'Lego Technic'?"

Ha! Are you telling me footballers have evolved past the knuckle-dragging Neanderthal stage?

*flickknife is held to throat*

I retract my statement.

Here's a great way to promote a game. Don't show a single screenshot, but instead have a page-sized grotesque close-up of some dodgy geezer in a Santa hat who has nothing to do with the game. Well, I assume so. Perhaps he was the main coder or character designer, but I doubt it.

Oh looky here, it's a full-page ad with one of those stupid 'magic eye' pictures. Turn the page and there's another one with a big cartoon guy on it. If there's one thing that should be expunged from the world of visual arts it's those moronic stereogram things. I'm glad they're now obsolete. Anyone at my school who said they weren't fake got beat up and quite rightly! Be gone, Marko's Magic Football, and take your pseudo-3D quackery with you!

Believe it or not, this is what female gamers used to wear when they'd hit the SNES to play some lame wrestling game starring some loudmouthed goofball in a yellow tank top. Honest, guv'. Although I do tell a word of a lie. Because there actually weren't any female gamers back then. I really had to search around for the product name in this ad and when I finally found it, it was something I'd never heard of.
Coincidence??

When promoting a magazine that covered the 3DO, PlayStation, Saturn, Neo Geo, Jaguar, Ultra 64 and PC, why would you mention "hot babes". Whoever they are, they ain't comin' near anyone who plays video games. Nice try, "X-Gen"!

This one I like. Click to enlarge, and read this secret diary, which has been left open on a desk in full view. Bonus points for use of the term 'smegger'. But 20 years on, I still have no idea what "nearly hurled in the lantren" means. Over to you, British viewers!

Ho ho, Night Trap– the game named as one of the main catalysts for teenagers' allegiances to Satan himself, by pompous out-of-touch busybodies and underachieving lardcakes. Still, you would need incontinence jocks when playing it – because you'd piss yourself laughing at the stilted dialogue and ear-shredding singing. Still, gotta love that post code at the bottom there. PI5 5SS, indeed.

BEAST MAN. Behold, he cometh. He's my Year 9 Maths teacher, the one who wasn't a kiddy-fiddler. Good to see in primitive beastly days of yore, the monsters had access to ray-guns. Probably helped them slay the mighty mammoths and homo erectus easier than axes or chipped stone tools did. Also what's with that "Mastermix '92"? Makes it look like a naff dance music compilation CD. In the small print in the bottom corner, it makes a point of mentioning the Shadow Of The Beast logo is copyrighted. Relax, Psygnosis Limited. I'm fairly sure no one will be copying that.

Imagine a complete fantasy world...where ad designers used calligraphic fonts and sentences in all caps. Jeez, I know there were less typefaces available 20 years ago but at least try to make your cod Olde Worlde warrior talk legible, man.

Just one more, and I've saved the worst for last. I don't know about you, but when I peruse inane ad copy from the drones of Dunbartonshire, Scotland, I'd rather not, right off the bat, be called a "dweeb". I'm a potential customer, see. The last thing you want to be doing is have me insulted by a crudely-drawn Bart Simpson knock-off. Or maybe you would? Do you really think I'm a dweeb, badly-drawn Teenage Bart Simpson? My heart says no, but the look on your face tells me yes.