19th January 2014 / No Comments Yet
Men Only /
September 1951
I think the copywriters might have sunk several pints themselves in the sun, because this advert has many words, few of which make any real sense. The comment referring to ‘womanlike’ is very confused, and it’s hard to make out who is actually being sold to. Perhaps this is the sort of rambling mess these ad men offered their own wives when stumbling back from a long liquid lunch.
Tags: blatant sexism, dodgy advice, emotional blackmail, marriage, retail, social history
12th January 2014 / 2 Comments
Men Only /
September 1951
Will’s Cut Golden Bar, a product of a bygone age (in the UK, at least). The advice is also from a bygone age, when pipe smoking was a sign of manhood, and smoking a routine sight in British offices.
Tags: dodgy advice, retail, social history
7th January 2014 / No Comments Yet
Men Only /
September 1951
Well, this is a fascinating snippet of history. I was given two issues of the pocket-sized magazine Men Only from 1950 and 1951 as a marvellously well-judged birthday present, which, at this point, bore no relation to the current pornographic magazine. Men Only from 1935-1970 was rather akin to GQ, although less concerned with pictures of women, the one nude in each issue being a ‘tasteful’ colour illustration. As this is pre-‘lad’ culture, the emphasis is more on being a responsible man; but not *too* responsible.
Hence, we have this advert for BP (at this point, called the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company), which appears to be referring to the nationalisation of oil production in Iran in 1951, causing Britain to organise a worldwide embargo of Iranian oil. Therefore, no BP (or Anglo-Iranian) products were available. This advert seems to be a remarkable ‘keep the faith’ message from the company, which at this point had withdrawn from Iran, only to return in 1953 when a Western-sponsored regime change had been installed. Petrol rationing in the UK had only ended in 1950, so the company could afford to sit things out back home, due to mass motoring not really becoming popular until the end of the 1950s onwards. As the excellent Wikipedia article shows, this wasn’t to be the end of the company’s troubles in that area.
This advert also appears to be addressing the development of the UK road network, which had been started in the 1920s, with the 1950s seeing the construction of motorways. All of great interest to the predominately male motorist, of course.
Tags: retail, social history