Oh, good luck with this guy. What’s he selling?
Pass it along, if you wish
47 Responses to Out of Context Ad Challenge
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AMC Matador sedans.
Hey, that’s Mad Man Muntz, and he’s selling car stereo, or some such. And obligatory Wizard of Oz tie-in, he’s listed at Wikipedia as being “a friend of Bert Lahr”!
Madman Muntz.
Sorry, couldn’t resist. It’s an icon.
Oh–what’s he selling? I’ll say this time he’s selling the Muntz car.
Join us for “Talk Like a Pirate” weekend at the Marriot.
I can’t believe that many people already beat me to the Madman Muntz I.D.- we sure have wealth of useless knowledge here (in a good way)
AMC Matador was my first thought too, but Baby M beat me to it.
Can’t believe it’s been over 10 minutes and nobody has said laxatives yet.
“I want to give these cars away, but my wife won’t let me, she’s crazy” Madman Muntz Commercial, Los Angeles TV, circa 1955. “Now, back to our movie”
You will never look as Manly, as Memorable or as Masculin as you can now in your very own Montoya Mantastic Boots!
Stylish togs for people who complain that department stores cater only to the brobdingnagian.
Even though Madman Muntz is out of the bag, I’ll “guess”:
Rhinoplasty for the insane.
He’s selling bull rides. “You must be at least this tall to ride.”
Or he’s a waiter – “Here is your table. I have your wine lists here in my jacket pocket…”
He is selling Paella!
With panache! – But just poquito panache.
Olé!
Que es mas macho, Ricardo Mantelban, or Madman Muntz?
It’s madman Muntz. He’s selling televisions. His car,the Muntz Jet came later. Or was it the other way around?
Shoot, I knew this one, but then so did several others.
Muntz televisions, of course.
Yes, it’s Muntz, and if he’s not selling the aforementioned cars or televisions, maybe he’s selling 4-track car stereos.
Bull semen. You just can’t get it through the mail.
Mad Man Muntz brand laxatives. Leaves you with a nice “ha ha” feeling down below.
When Tim Pawlenty is elected President and declares an Empire, this will be on every ten dollar bill.
Damn. I’m hours late. Sure, it’s Madman Muntz. Thanks to Bob Hope, Jack Benny and other radio comedians, LA car dealers like “madman Muntz” and “the Smiling Irishman” were known coast to coast – as well known as the LaBrea tar pits, Pismo Beach, and Cucamonga. They couldn’t have bought that kind of publicity.
Didn’t Muntz sell the first “4 Track” stereos for cars? (Before 8 Track)
Dang, you people are too dang smart. I had never even heard of Madman Muntz. I was trying to think up something that would connect a large-toothed Napoleon-like dictator and a bullfighter.
I took one look at that guy at thought: “Alcohol”
I took one look at that guy and thought: “Alcohol”
I’m pretty sure Muntz was selling TVs at this stage. I recently read up on him. He used to look at his engineers’ prototype sets and start snipping wires at random. If the TV still worked, “we obviously don’t need that.” That’s how he kept costs down. Since most of the stuff he cut out was things that helped improve long-distance reception, that explains why the Muntz TV my aunt gave my dad never worked worth a hoot on our farm.
how’d Madman Muntz end up?
broke as a customer.
story goes that he’d walk along the production line in the TV plant if nothing else was going on, England had already been defeated, and so on. would randomly clip out a part of TVs on the test bed. if it failed, oops.
if it didn’t fail, orders would come down to stop installing that part.
which must be totally bogus, because anecdote says the customer was the test bed.
DANG, Lars! you beat me to my limited stock of clever trivia!
Believe it or not, the Mad Man put his likeness in the center of the steering wheels on his cars–
http://www.conceptcarz.com/view/photo/107956,11299/1952-Muntz-Jet_photo.aspx
This was an appropriate thing to do, as he lost money on every car, and contrary to some current political thought, you can’t make that up with volume.
As an aside, one of my earliest TV-commercial memories is of a men’s chorus singing “There’s something about a Muntz TV”…
My first car stereo was an under-dash Muntz 4 and 8 track tape deck. The car was an ex-phone company car, so it didn’t have a radio of any kind in it. I later got an FM radio that played through the 8-track playhead. First tape bought? Bread – “Baby I’m A Want You.”
_@_v – amazing the number of people who know who earl ‘madman’ muntz was… tried to post this earlier but the bleat froze up on me…
in the sixties he sold 4-track cartridge stereo a couple years before 8-tracks came out. in the early 80s he was a supporter of the ‘technicolor cvc’ compact video cassette format and used a logo like that on the 8mm-sized tapes.
www(dot)labguysworld(dot)com/Cat_Technicolor.htm
so i’m going with a cvc video product which included a combo tv-vcr
my first tape was the Association’s greatest hits. boom! — who’s your daddy?
Are you sure it’s not at the Marrrriot?
My first 8 Track Tape?
KISS Dressed To Kill
Good times, good times….
That’s true – Muntz was an innovator with the 4-track tape players, which led to the more-popular 8-track machines.
I’ve got an 8-track (with AM radio) in my ’66 Mustang: first year you could get one in a Ford vehicle:
http://im1.shutterfly.com/media/47b9d611b3127ccec7a99406302600000040O01BcsmrFm5Yg9vPgI/cC/f%3D0/ps%3D50/r%3D0/rx%3D720/ry%3D480/
From an engineering standpoint it’s quite innovative.
Well, it’s either Muntz Stereo Paks, or it’s that new website http://www.MAPolean.com; you go there and get turn-by-turn instructions to anywhere you want to conquer.
When I was a kid in Glendale, Mad Man Muntz msold used cars. The TV sets.
Dog Gone It. Finally know the answer to one of these hands down and EVERYONE else does too! Cars! or TVs! or Tape Decks! Good Ol’ Madman Muntz.
And Ford jumped right in with its marketing of the new concept:
http://www.myspace.com/66forddemo
I believe in 1966 the Mustang, the Thunderbird and the Lincoln Continental were the three cars to get the “built-in” 8-tracks; the other cars in the line had regular in-dash radios and the 8-track player hung in a pod underneath the dash, like in this LTD:
http://www.oldcarbrochures.com/main.php?g2_view=core.DownloadItem&g2_itemId=43661&g2_serialNumber=2
Of course, ladies ALWAYS wore white gloves while driving!
4-track was actually fairly obvious when you see what’s involved. endless loop tape was well-known and availiable, used in broadcast packs, point of sale demos, etc.
the innovation was moving all track directions left to right in an endless loop pack, and using a metal splice to kick a solenoid to rotate the head height adjustment.
and the tape direction = same on all tracks was well known in professional recorders and, by this time, a curious little instrument known as the Mellotron. which used a 15 or 20 second 8-track 1-inch tape to hold (14? the whole scale?) source notes. press a key, the tape is pulled forward, and frequency divider circuits formed the base note from the source note. press multiple keys, multiple dividers. release all keys, springs pulled the rollers that bunched the tape into a series of snake loops back to the beginning.
didn’t release the keys, the tape got scoured at the end of the loop. sometimes it would break off. sometimes it would stretch.
eventually it would get worn enough that it had to be replaced. and the head and rollers had to be cleaned frequently.
most commonly used by The Moody Blues, iteration two.
Madman Muntz Story at
FreeEnterpriseland.com/MUNTZ.html
I don’t remember if the story I heard came from Bob Pease, the analog electronics guru, or from a phenmomenal electronics instructor, Mr. Robinson, who I had a number of years ago, but Swschrad’s story isn’t bogus:
Madman Muntz began by manufacturing cheap TV’s for the New York City market. He realized that his competitors made expensive sets that were expensive because they had tuning circuits that could pull in a faint signal. In New York City, the signal was strong and a cheap tuner worked fine. If you sold those cheap sets, you lost all the market outside NYC, but you could undercut all of your competition for urban customers.
Muntz would ask an engineer what a part did, then say “What happens if I do this?” as he clipped it out. If the circuit still worked, that component was eliminated. The practice, I understand, resulted in an industry term: “Muntzising” for getting rid of parts you don’t really need.
I am almost sure I have seen this picture used in an ad for a dry cleaning store. Not positive but close enough to offer for submittal here.
@Doug Collins
Yeah, Muntz was quite a character. One of my neighbors worked for him and still grumbles about not getting his last two weeks pay. You see Madman Muntz went a little too mad and ran off with all the company funds, and his secretary, to Japan.
I’d only heard of Madman Muntz second-hand; maybe he ended up being more mid-West and West Coast, ’cause I never saw hide nor hair of him in the Garden State.
But what a fitting end for a madman! Thanks for telling us(as Paul Harvey would say) “The rrrrrest….of the story.”
@workycodeymom
“I was trying to think up something that would connect a large-toothed Napoleon-like dictator and a bullfighter.”
Well, we have the first half of that combination in the White House, there’s plenty to work with there….bull, bull, what are bulls known for producing?Dang, if I only had more time to puzzle that out.
A fellow named Dave Biro took the mellotron principle one step further, and spliced each 8-track tape into a continuous loop, so it could hold the notes indefinitely. He called the instrument the Birotron. Rick Wakeman from Yes was so impressed with the instrument that he helped fund Birotronic Ltd in manufacturing them. Wakeman also used a Biroton on two Yes albums, Tormato and Yesshows (the latter of which hit #22 in the UK charts).
Birotronics went out of business, and only 35 of the instrument were made (if even that many) and only 5 or 6 of them are accounted for now.
Which means the Birotron may be the rarest instrument to be featured in a top 40 record.
Since most of the stuff he cut out was things that helped improve long-distance reception, that explains why the Muntz TV my aunt gave my dad never worked worth a hoot on our farm. — Lars Walker
Madman Muntz was based in Los Angeles, and Muntz TVs were intended to undercut the competition in the booming LA market. Before cable (or even UHF), Los Angeles had the largest number of broadcast TV stations of any American city, with transmitters located atop Mount Wilson. (Which filled the northern horizon where I grew up.) KNXT Channel 2, KNBC 4, KTLA 5, KABC 7, KHJ 9, KTTV 11, and KCOP 13. (Joined in my high school days by channel 22, PBS on 28 and 50, and Kimba the White Lion on 52 — remember when you needed a separate tuner for 14-83?)
My dad always described the doors on the Muntz cars — instead of being hinged, they slid like the main side door on today’s minivans. “So you don’t slam the door into the car next to you and chip the paint.”