Scanning Around With Gene: Occasional Oddball Image Roundup

Gene Gable

And some items strike me as odd by any time measure. I can’t imagine that these ads made any more sense when they were published than they do now. First are two for Chlorodent toothpaste from 1953, then a 1952-era ad from Moore business forms, and finally it seems that in 1953 if you wore a Bantamac jacket made of watertight “Closure Cloth,” not only would the garment breathe underwater, but you could smoke a pipe there as well.




This one, from Pacific Gas and Electric Company in 1952, caught my eye because all the ads from them lately are about conserving energy and watts to lower your bill.

You may have thought that V-Mail was a new and clever shortcut to describe voicemail. But did you know during World War Two, V-Mail was a system of sending letters to servicemen that involved the government photographing the letters on microfilm for lighter shipment weight, then printing them out at the other end?

And finally, since it seems just as appropriate now as it was when it first ran in 1952, I leave you with this suggestion from Budweiser.

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