“If you were a tree, what kind would you be?” – Anonymous question from “The Dating Game” The air is thick with the scent of Old Spice and cigarette smoke. Yet, there I am, decked out in my polyester best, ready to embark on the most bewildering challenge of my life – my first job interview. In the late 1960s, job interviews were less a professional screening process and more like an episode of “The Dating Game.” Most interviewers had no idea who or what they were looking for, how to find them, and what they’d do if they did. It was an era when a candidate’s ability to answer…
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Recycled Slogans The New Frontier in Advertising
In the realm of advertising, a powerful slogan is timeless. From Finger-Lickin’ Good to Just Do It, catchy phrases have not only defined brands but also embedded themselves in our cultural fabric. Many of the original patents for beloved product slogans have recently expired leaving thousands of them “up for grabs.” This presents a problem for some and a new opportunity for others to scoop up these catchphrases, giving new meaning to the question, “Where do you want to go today?” Let’s take a look… Here’s a list of some of the more well-known and beloved slogans from the past and the companies that spawned them: “Think Outside the Bun”…
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Those Good Old Time Diseases Why nobody gets Dry Bellyache or Bucket Fever these days
I was a first-grader at Van Nuys Elementary School the first time I came into contact with the medical system and its old time diseases. As a healthy child, the only thing that slowed me down was the occasional off-color weenie on “Hot Dog Friday.” None of the hair-netted ladies behind the steam table thought for a minute that I could have something as serious as Ptomaine Poisoning and wouldn’t have been able to recognize it even if I had. Instead, one of them took off her apron and marched me downstairs to the nurse’s office where she laid me down on an old army cot that smelled of other…
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A Concise History of Breasts Who has them, who doesn't and what women did about them
It’s that time of year again, when a man’s fancy turns to breasts. Specifically, women’s breasts. You know, babaloos, bazookas, boulders, chi-chis and flapdoodles? Headlamps, hooters, jugs, Lewinskis, and chumbawumbas. Milk bombs, nose warmers, shirt puppies, tatas, dinglebobbers and torpedoes. Whatever you choose to call them, they’re the most alluring part of a women’s body and the part that’s always on a man’s mind. And, apparently, I’m not alone. Men and women have been thinking about boobsters for about as long as they’ve been adorning women’s chests. Although no one was there to record it, I’m sure that the moment after his fateful bite of the apple, Adam said to…
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The Golden Era of Cigarette Ads When cigarette smoking, big tobacco and lung cancer were cool
When Sir Walter Raleigh helped to popularize tobacco during the 16th century, he probably had no idea that he would be responsible for cigarette ads; one of the largest and most profitable advertising campaigns in the history of Madison Avenue. Campaigns that would see a single product go from lifestyle enhancement to a pariah of the medical community within a matter of years. Give Me Your Young at Heart Before their negative association with health, cigarettes were marketed to successful young men and women as a way to relax and get more out of life. Advertisements were filled with virile, athletic men and women prancing around tennis courts in snow-white…