It would take 50 years until WKRP could mount an equally disastrous promotion.
Pass it along, if you wish
59 Responses to Out of Context Ad Challenge: the Answer
Host with the Most
I knew it all along but wasn’t going to spoil the fun.
I won’t say i knew it all along (i didn’t, at all…) but I under the “I thought so” category i will say that there was no way any advertiser could use the Hindenburg disaster to sell anything, and I note that the date on the picture is 1915…more than twenty years before Lakehurst. What a singularly odd ad, though, nonetheless…Tory
I don’t know what would hurt less, dropped turkeys or dropped pianos
As God is my witness, I thought pianos could fly.
I don’t think the Oak Case will play like new after it hits the ground. Probably not worth $75. What’s that adjusted for inflation?
I am imagining the “El Kabong” sound effect amplified about 100 times. (Apologies to Mr. Lileks whose disdain for Hanna-Barbera is well known.)
You know that the week we stop saying “laxatives” is the week we’ll get a 1926 ad for Dia-Rright-A, the Laxative that’s All Right! or something.
Oh, the humanity.
“Back in my day, when we downloaded music . . . “
the first calulator i could find says $1 is about $20, $48 = $970, $195 = $3950. Upright Pianos on Amazon are $2000 to $4000.
The problem with laxative ads is that at least in the newspapers I’ve looked at (ones which are presumably much smaller than the Minneapolis Star at the time) almost all the laxative ads are just big walls of quack-laden text, kind of hard to get an out-of-context snippet out of.
You can see a couple of 1934 examples of the genre here:
http://thesledgehammer.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/recycled-newspaper-the-east-side-journal-march-15th-1934/
(scroll down a bit for the ads.)
holy crap! that is terrifying.
I think this is how Eddie Valiant’s brother died.
Just like a toon.
“No calomel in Carter’s Little Liver Pills.” Pity. Calomel goes well with radium.
The nostrums used by qualified physicians 75-100 years ago is astounding. Mercury, lead, arsenic. All prescribed regularly. It really makes me wonder how the future will look back on the medical science of today. Will they see today’s medical practitioners as witchdoctors practicing in the dark? Look at the changes in just the past 10 years. What will the next 10 years bring? The next 100?
Beam me up McCoy!
This is the worst thing I’ve ever witnessed.
They’re gonna hafta tune all these after they land. They’ll be flat.
Tory –
Airships in the popular consciousness in 1915 would have been associated with German air raids over England –
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zeppelin#1915_Raids
Which, to my mind, makes the ad even weirder.
60 years (1975). At 50, WKRP would be playing British Invasion tunes and Les Nessman would look and sound the same, only with more hair.
Crikey, that’s carpet bombing to effect – Who devised that campaign of terror, Elton John, Billy Joel, or Jerry Lee Lewis?
“They’re gonna hafta tune all these after they land. They’ll be flat.”
And so will the humans they fall on
Wow! Love. It. Would buy a poster of it.
Very good, Bleatniks. Beat me to the first three jokes I thought of. ‘Course, if it _was_ Acme Piano Co., the next phase of the campaign would be about how you could play the “Anvil Chorus” on them(with predictable changes in the artwork). Actually, I’m with jenifersf–that just cries out to be remade in poster & t-shirt form. It’s got that hint of fantasy/weirdness that crops up regularly in commercial art up to the Depression. It’s why some of those images were so popular with silk-screen poster designers during the psychodelic years.
I have to tip the hat to TaiChiWawa, though. Downloaded indeed!
A big pat on the back to the posters who said pianos yesterday. I thought it was for suitcases.
And I gotta tell you, it warms my heart as a child of the “modern age” to see that advertising back in the good old days was just as tacky (tackier, even?) than now.
According to this:
http://www.westegg.com/inflation/
$75 in 1915 would be about $1500 in 2007.
it’s all a German plot to put tinkly pianos in your homes with little radio sets inside! you have been warned!
all would have, after the explosion and fall, a dark and distressed finish. perfect match for any squatter hovel in Hooverville.
Well, you see, right there’s your problem. Your blimp ain’t going nowhere, it’s filled with pianos. You need hydrogen in there, see. That’ll make it lighter than air. Playing a light, airy tune just ain’t the same.
Look at the bottom of the ad-the guvmint was experimenting with chemtrails all the way back in 1915!
Best. WKRP. Episode. Ever.
@rbj: That cracked me right up!
Talking of stuff in bad taste, I was wandering the internet the other day, and ran across the results of a comedian trying a World Trade Center joke. He got dead silence, and then a few boos. “Too soon, eh?” he said, and soldiered on.
So I started wondering, how long do you have to wait before something like that can be funny. As it happens, I was able to see “The Complete History of the United States” by the Reduced Shakespear Company. In it, the audience is treated to a re-enactment of the Lincoln assassination, involving an actor wearing a balloon on his yead for Lincoln, and a giant bullet with a pin on the end of it.
I found it to be in incredibly poor taste. But then, I’m a stuffy bastard for whom some thing are utterly sacred. The REST of the house found it quite funny.
So as a baseline, I’d say you could try WTC jokes after about 120 – 150 years.
Bill
http://willstuff.wordpress.com
17 upright pianos? I’ll go out on a limb and say WKRP’s promotion was not equally disastrous.
Dear heavens, imagine the sound this would make.
I think that’s the same piano company that had an ad in 1902 where pianos were floating up from a sinking ship (that just hit an iceberg), and another ad in 1930 where Japanese airplanes were dropping pianos on a Hawaiian island. The piano company fired that advertising firm for a long time for obvious reasons.
However, it was 1990, and with suffering sales due to the recession, the piano company called them back to request an ad campaign. “Well, here’s an idea to illustrate your falling prices… you know the World Trade Towers in Manhattan?…”
Wow… you mean no one thought to say ….
(wait for it)
“Oh, the pianity!”
Notice how they do not so much fly, as plummet.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vkw2DdoskPY
OMG, that’s what Air Force Standby was doing flying around Manhattan! — they were going to drop pianos!
hit a bank executive, please.
@Bill McN: I’m with you: It’s always too soon for some jokes — and I can’t imagine (and I’m glad I can’t!) what someone might find to say about 9/11 that they thought people would find funny. And there’s not much to laugh at in the Lincoln assassination, either, really.
I’m hopelessly stuffy, too — but I think “irreverence” in humor is WAY overrated!
Wow, Umbriel, thanks…i checked out the link…you’re right, it makes the ad even stranger and, gee whilikins, pretty gol darn tacky!
GardenStater,
Thanks. All the other jokes were taken so I had to come up with something.
Though I do think some of the comments here fell a little flat. They needed to be sharper and upright, and not try to be so grand.
[...] ballots” Lorie Byrd on the real deal on Jobs Now Ed Morrissey: The Whims of Madmen Lileks: Big Drop in Piano Prices! Afghan Civilian Deaths: General says Don’t jump to conclusions. by The_Anchoress @ 11:42 [...]
[...] found a really strange 1915 piano [...]
Upright Pianos?
Not for long…
@rbj – Don’t get so keyed up.
Damn rivlax!
Still, SOMEONE had to say it – I just wanted it to be me…
“And there’s not much to laugh at in the Lincoln assassination, either, really. ”
The reporter asks: “Other than that, Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?”
Jasony is right. I saw that WKRP when it originally aired and told my friends about it. They didn’t believe me until the network reran it while we were waiting to go out one night. I thought I might need to call paramedics when the turkeys came out of the chopper. The only thing I’ve seen that’s funnier is the Lars Affair episode of Mary Tyler Moore. That is truly hysterical.
I don’t get it.
Blast! Someone beat me to the Ford’s Theater joke. Well, here’s another one from a standup(George something-or-other) in that “Is it too soon?” vein:
“Reba, can I go to the dance tonight?”
“I dunno, Miz Lizzy–why donchoo axe yo’ parents!”
It reminds me of that car commercial last year — was it for Toyota? — with hundreds of car keys raining down out of the sky. Not quite as scary as pianos, granted. But scary enough that I can’t imagine why they thought it would sell cars.
Not the Hindenburg (1937), but I must admit those forward flaps, stacked wings or stabilizers or whatever they are confound me greatly. I’ve never see those on any picture of airships.
I did not realize until now the Hindenburg was a Nazi financed zeppelin. I just now saw a photo with that dreadful symbol on the lower tail fin.