No joke to be bald

Losing your hair is not funny - particularly when the before treatment and after treatment pictures do not belong to the same individual. 

These two blokes could be close family, but they are definitely not the same person.

"No joke to be bald", 1930
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The next piece is a fascinating reminder that technology and vanity were cuddly to each other seventy years ago. Just like today.

Instead of the laser powered light of the 21st Century, back then you had alternating pressure and vaccum treatment. WTF?

You could even get a treatment at the barber's for your balding head. Ironic.

"X-ER-VAC", 1937
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Plug and play

This is a fantastic piece from 1949 - television sets were fairly new back then and the consumerist boom of the 1950's was about to get in full swing.

But prices were still very high.

The smallest set on this ad is $229.95; back then it was 10% of the yearly average wage, or 25% of the average price of a brand new car. So buying a television set is an investment.

How do you sell it?

Make it easy to use. No aerial (antenna) - they all use the Philco Electronic Built-In Aerial System!

Just "Plug and Play". What a wonderful expression: it sold televisions back then, and it's still selling computers and operating systems right now.

"Just plug in and play", 1949
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Not a single one

You gotta love those people in the tobacco advertising industry. The claims on behalf of their products are almost legendary.

Take this one for instance. Not a single case of throat irritation. No sir. Not one. The specialists could not find *one single case* among all the people they examined.

Which, according to the ad, was in the order of 2470 weekly throat examinations. Wow.

How many doctors did they have on payroll?

"Not a single case", 1949
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An amazing vision indeed

This page is not an advertisement as such, but editorial content from 1927 and it predicts fairly accurately the world of the future. I mean, today.

Of course, there's a great deal of retro-future involved in this article. Like our perennial favourite, "flying cars" - but there's also plenty of references to real, current technologies: synthetic fibers, atomic power and even, portable music and voice-mail systems.

"Amazing vision", 1927
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No effort at all

"Waistline reducer", 1924
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Some ads are way ahead of their time.

Take this Automatic Waistline Reducer for instance. It could be the main star of a late-night TV advertorial hosted by a lesser-known, evil-twin of a reality-show débutante.

The same empty promises and dubious facts that grace your LCD-screen TV were already there in 1924: Rid yourself of the paunch. Check. Flabby flesh will vanish. Check. Absolutely automatic. Check.

There's no mention at all about keeping a good diet and doing exercise. The Waistline Reducer works almost by magic.

Think about it the next time you do some late-night TV shopping. It's all magic.