19th December 2010 / 3 Comments
Woman's Realm /
11th March 1967
Starch has been accused of causing weight gain for many years, but there’s not any conclusive evidence for this. As this NHS article says, it’s more likely to be portion sizes that make the difference. The problem with the approach of this ad is the short-termist nature of it, because woman cannot live on Energen alone! My auntie is a perfect case study of someone who periodically dieted by eating virtually nothing but Ryvita (Energen under a different name, really), and then put the weight she lost back on when she came off the diet, because she hadn’t changed the eating habits which put the weight on in the first place. As for the husband who magically loves his wife again because she’s lost a few pounds? Yeah, same old, same old…
Tags: blatant sexism, diets, dodgy advice, Energen, retail
19th November 2010 / 1 Comment
Woman's Realm /
31st March 1967
Books and toothpaste? An interesting combination, but actually not a bad offer! Just don’t let Junior get his hands on Casino Royale…
Tags: household, retail, Signal
13th November 2010 / 2 Comments
Woman's Realm /
11th March 1967
Well, lookee here. Is this an ad from one of the first disposable nappy brands in the UK? I don’t know about your mum, but mine put traditional terry nappies on me. I’ve probably said this before, but the prospect of my mum boiling nappies was what made my dad put his foot down and demand that they bought a washing machine. Bizarrely, my mum was quite prepared to go through the sort of drudgery that her poor mother had to! Also: a knitted cover?! I think we can work out why disposables didn’t have those for very long!
Tags: motherhood, retail
7th November 2010 / 2 Comments
Woman's Realm /
18th March 1967
Ah, the sweet taste of…oh, sorry, I’ve already done that one. It’s an admirable attempt to get consumers to recognise that sometimes, fruit on its own can be great, but I’m not tempted, sadly.
Tags: Cape, food, retail
29th October 2010 / 3 Comments
Woman's Realm /
18th March 1967
A rather clever competition dealing with the main problem of a consumer society: where to put it all. It’s doubtful that people before the late ’60s had storage as a real issue. As a child of the ’80s, I grew up with overflowing cupboards, and am currently using this post as an excuse to avoid dealing with the large amount of crap upstairs. Probably the best thing we could do for our children is to teach them about the folly of continually buying stuff to make themselves feel better, isn’t it? Yeah, I don’t think that’s likely to happen either…
Tags: blatant sexism, consumerism, household, social history
19th October 2010 / 7 Comments
Woman's Realm /
11th March 1967
Well, the message is clear: marriage brings wisdom, and a Hoover washing machine. Lord alone knows what those other slatterns bought!
Tags: blatant sexism, Hoover, household, retail
26th September 2010 / No Comments Yet
Woman's Realm /
11th March 1967
Call me cynical, but isn’t that model’s radiant look less down to PLJ, and more down to the make-up that they’ve plastered all over her? In terms of messages given to women at this time, this ad really does take the biscuit. Not content with persuading women that wearing a nylon strait-jacket and not telling your husband that you dye your hair is normal behaviour, they’re now on at you to look great at 7am. Bastards.
Tags: beauty, blatant sexism, diets, dodgy advice, retail
18th August 2010 / No Comments Yet
Woman's Realm /
18th March 1967
I picked this for the marvellous language and colours used in the shoe ad, but I thought I’d leave in the iron ad as evidence that in 40 years, the only real change in iron technology is the steam generator iron. As an aside, I remember a lodger my family had in the early ’80s asking for a steam iron, and my mother having to tell him that we hadn’t got one: we couldn’t afford it! Steam irons are a lot cheaper nowadays…
Tags: Hoover, household, kids, retail
28th July 2010 / 8 Comments
Woman's Realm /
18th March 1967
*David Attenborough voice* “Now, here we have a marvellous example of a traditional housewife in the wild: a Llandovery farmhouse, to be precise. Watch her nimble fingers at work as she bakes countless pies for her family, and lovingly lines their arteries with Cookeen.”
Ahem. Cookeen is still around, of course, and appears to have made a comeback, due to cookery programmes encouraging us to get our mixing bowls out. Nowadays, Cookeen is owned by Princes, who are based in the Liver Building in Liverpool, rather than in Kildare House in London. The reason why I bothered looking this up was because the company I work for now occupy Kildare House as one of their many London offices, oddly enough.
Tags: Cookeen, cooking, motherhood, retail, social history
25th July 2010 / 5 Comments
Woman's Realm /
18th March 1967
Yep, just a nostalgia-fest this afternoon, I’m afraid. I remember an Eighties variant of this measuring machine that was automatic. As it closed around my young foot, I remember not being at all sure about the whole idea.
Tags: kids, retail