From Facebook friends who passed this image (from Kitsch Bitsch) on:

(#1)

Clearly a page from a catalogue, offering jockstraps (from an unnamed company) and Hutspah shirts, with the models arranged so that a giant smiling Jockstrap Man dominates the page and the two shirt models (well, the same model in two different shirts) appear to be marveling at the apparition.

The page is directed towards men (“an exciting part of your wardrobe”, “allowing you to look informal, but well dressed”), almost surely gay man (what straight guy would view jockstraps as “sexy and sensual”?). The hair styles suggest the ’70s, and it looks like the heyday of Hutspah shirts was the ’70s, when the company produced many extravagant items, like this Hawaiian shirt:

(#2)

There are listings in business directories for a Hutspah Shirts at 185 W. Wyoming Ave. in Philadelphia, but with precious little information about the company.

Searching for Hutspah shirts led me to other remarkable shirts, especially the work of Nudie Cohn, a prince of excess. From Wikipedia:

Nudie Cohn (December 15, 1902 – May 9, 1984) was a Ukraine-born American tailor who designed decorative rhinestone-covered suits, known popularly as “Nudie Suits”, and other elaborate outfits for some of the most famous celebrities of his era. He also became famous for his outrageous customized automobiles.

Cohn was born Nuta Kotlyarenko in Kiev. To escape the pogroms of Czarist Russia his parents sent him at age 11, with his brother, Julius, to America. For a time he criss-crossed the country working as a shoeshine boy and later a boxer, and hung out, he later claimed, with the gangster Pretty Boy Floyd. While living in a boardinghouse in Minnesota he met Helen “Bobbie” Kruger, and married her in 1934. In the midst of the Great Depression the newlyweds moved to New York City and opened their first store, “Nudie’s for the Ladies”, specializing in custom-made undergarments for showgirls.

Relocating to California in the early 1940s, Nudie and Bobbie began designing and manufacturing clothing in their garage. In 1947 Cohn persuaded a young, struggling country singer named Tex Williams to buy him a sewing machine with the proceeds of an auctioned horse. In exchange, Cohn made clothing for Williams.[1] As their creations gained a following, the Cohns opened “Nudie’s of Hollywood” on the corner of Victory and Vineland in North Hollywood, dealing exclusively in western wear, a style very much in fashion at the time. Nudie’s designs brought the already-flamboyant style to a new level of ostentation with the liberal use of rhinestones and themed images in chain stitch embroidery. One of his early designs, in 1962, for singer Porter Wagoner, was a peach-colored suit featuring rhinestones, a covered wagon on the back, and wagon wheels on the legs. He offered the suit to Wagoner for free, confident that the popular performer (like Tex Williams) would serve as a billboard for his clothing line. His confidence once again proved justified and the business grew rapidly. In 1963 the Cohns relocated to a larger North Hollywood facility, renamed “Nudie’s Rodeo Tailors”, on Lankershim Boulevard.

Many of Cohn’s designs became signature looks for their owners. Among his most famous creations was Elvis Presley’s $10,000 gold lamé suit, worn by the singer on the cover of his 50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong album. He designed the iconic costume worn by Robert Redford in the 1979 film Electric Horseman, which is now owned and exhibited by the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. He created Hank Williams’ white cowboy suit with musical notations on the sleeves, and Gram Parsons’ infamous suit for the cover of the Flying Burrito Brothers’ 1969 album The Gilded Palace of Sin, featuring pills, poppies, marijuana leaves, naked women, and a huge cross. Many of the film costumes worn by Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were Nudie designs. John Lennon was a customer, as were John Wayne, Gene Autry, George Jones, Cher, Ronald Reagan, Elton John, Robert Mitchum, Pat Buttram, Tony Curtis, Michael Landon, Glenn Campbell, Hank Snow, and numerous musical groups, notably America and Chicago. The members of ZZ Top sported “Nudie Suits” on the cover photo of their 1975 album Fandango! In 2006 Porter Wagoner said he had accumulated 52 Nudie Suits, costing between $11,000 and $18,000 each, since receiving his first free outfit in 1962. The European entertainer Bobbejaan Schoepen was a client and personal friend; his collection of 35 complete stage outfits is the largest in Europe.

The man in one of his own creations:

(#3)

Elvis in the famous suit:

(#4)

And Gram Parsons in his:

(#5)

There are so many to choose from.

In yesterday’s NYT, a story (“Off-Color Wordplay From Kraft, Part of a Big Marketing Blitz” by Stuart Elliott) with a baffling bit of taboo avoidance in it (bold-faced in the excerpt below).

The Kraft Foods Group is continuing a major marketing blitz with an initiative for a new product line — budgeted at more than $30 million in the first year — that seeks to tap into the current mania with all things chef.

… the campaign takes a cheeky tack as embodied by some mildly naughty wordplay in the theme of the ads, “Get your chef together,” which doubles as the address of a microsite, or special Web site, devoted to the new line.

… The Kraft campaigns are indicative of how ads from mainstream marketers are loosening up — or becoming crass and crude, depending on your perspective — to reflect changing societal mores, particularly when it comes to younger shoppers. Other recent examples include ads for Slim-Fast diet products sold by Unilever, which depict women thinking, “I want to show off my new ass,” and commercials for the Kmart division of Sears Holdings in which shoppers utter provocative-sounding phrases like “Ship my pants” and “Big gas savings.”

… Some in advertising, however, question the approach.

“What are you telling consumers, you’re a potty-mouth brand?” asked Anthony Sperduti, who founded, with Andy Spade, the Partners & Spade agency in New York.

“If your only goal is to raise awareness” or generate ideas that “a 25-year-old passes around” in social media like YouTube, Mr. Sperduti said, such tactics could be effective in the short term. “But where is the long-term?” he added.

(Mr. Sperduti is no prude. A new line of sleepwear and underwear that he and Mr. Spade plan to bring out under the Sleepy Joe’s brand name includes a T-shirt that is to bear a slogan that, to paraphrase its message by omitting a four-letter word, will declare, “Fie on tech.”)

I’m stumped, and so is Ben Zimmer (who sent me the link). And I couldn’t find anything on the web about the t-shirt (beyond this NYT story). I did discover that the company is called Sleepy Jones, not Sleepy Joe’s. From Wikipedia:

Sleepy Jones is a collection of loungewear created by Andy Spade and the design studio Partners & Spade. The line was inspired by the lifestyles of artists like David Hockney, Pablo Picasso, and Jean Seberg.

The company was founded in 2013 by Andy Spade, Anthony Sperduti, and Chad Buri. Of the t-shirts currently available on its website, only two have words on them: FLUXUS and DADA. Both art-related.

Links on this blog: to a Kraft campaign with Zesty Anderson Davis; to the “ship my pants” ad; and to “Ship happens” (with links to other X happens postings).

[Addendum on the taboo avoidance. On Facebook, Michael Siemon suggests the obvious interpretation: fie on replaces fuck. But saying that a four-letter word has been omitted forestalls this interpretation. Or the reporter didn't express himself very well.]

[Further addendum: Ben Zimmer has checked with the reporter, who verfies that he wrote fie on for fuck. Then he should have said that a four-letter word was "replaced", rather than "omitted".]

Today’s Zippy:

On the Nauga, see here, and on Poppin’ Fresh, see here. It’s news to me that Poppin’ Fresh is now a licensed therapist.

From the Inquisitr site:

Kraft’s Zesty Guy Back Thanks To Million Moms Protest

Kraft’s Zesty Guy raised the hackles of One Million Moms, a group known for its continual harassment of America’s Sweetheart Ellen DeGeneres and fear of ambient bestiality in network commercials. So how did One Million Moms affect Kraft’s Zesty Guy marketing campaign? It seems, if Jezebel is correct, that their anger served only to get us more of the naughty pinup boy.

Some samples from the new campaign will follow below, along with a Kraft scheme for creating Zestygrams for personal use.

The background: material on the previous playful campaign (with photos) is in “Zesty Anderson Davis”. On the One Million Moms’ ravingly hyperbolic response, from Inquisitr:

One Million Moms Cause Kraft Ad Controversy

The group of conservative mothers is outraged because Kraft has gone and used a nude man, covering his important “parts” simply with a blanket. The fact that the man is sprawled out rather leisurely in the Kraft ad only adds fuel to the One Million Moms’ fire. Their site goes on to say, “Christians will not be able to buy Kraft dressings or any of their products until they clean up their advertising. “The consumers they are attempting to attract – women and mothers – are the very ones they are driving away. “Who will want Kraft products in their fridge or pantry if this vulgarity is what they represent?”

They objected to the indecency of that picnic photo (which is in the previous posting). Kraft has responded with this new offering, using sand rather than the corner of a picnic blanket:

(#1)

A montage of some other ad images in the new series:

(#2)

On to Zestygrams, on Kraft’s Let’s Get Zesty site. Here’s an example:

(#3)

There are two stages in composing a Zestygram. First, you pick onej of six images:

(#4)

Then, you get a template message to fill in using pull-down menus. For Thanks, the template looks like this:

OH HEY
[pull-down menu]
NO ONE
[pull-down menu]
QUITE LIKE YOU.
JUST WANTED TO SAY
THANKS
[pull-down menu]

(The pull-down menus ensure that Kraft, which provides the options, isn’t associated with anything truly raunchy — suggestive, yes; dirty, no.)

Finally paid attention to ads for Skittles, with the theme “Share the rainbow … Taste the rainbow”. Given my interests in all things rainbow and in foods of all kinds, I thought I’d check out the ad campaign, and found two notable things: a sexy mock ad for Skittles and more rainbow food (using Skittles).

Background on Skittles, from Wikipedia:

Skittles is a brand of fruit-flavoured sweets, currently produced and marketed by the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, a division of Mars, Inc. They have hard sugar shells which carry the letter S. The inside is mainly sugar, corn syrup, and hydrogenated palm kernel oil along with fruit juice, citric acid, and natural and artificial flavours. The confectionery has been sold in a variety of flavour collections, such as Tropical and Wild Berry.

… Skittles’ “taste the rainbow” theme was created by New York ad agency D’Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles circa 1994.

A rainbow made of Skittles:

(#1)

Skittles commercials tend to be brief and funny, so a number of people have tried their hands at doing parody versions. As in this “Newlyweds” spot (carefully labeled as “not affiliated with Wrigley or Skittles”), which is NSFW:

 (#2)

The newlyweds, still in their wedding clothes,  are screwing energetically and vocally. The groom pulls out and cries, “It’s about to come!” — and then he shoots Skittles into the bride’s mouth and onto her wedding gown, noting with pride, “All over you!”

This is the work of Cousins,

a directing team made up of Jordan Sharon and Keith Hamm, two young filmmakers based in Los Angeles, CA… Their fun and unexpected brand of humor is perfectly represented in the notorious Skittles “Newlyweds” spot, which became a massive viral hit. (link)

When I searched for Skittles ads via “rainbow Skittles”, I pulled up rainbow foodstuffs made with the candies, in particular some Skittles cakes:

Here’s an imposing construction, suitable for a same-sex wedding:

(#3)

and a shorter number with rainbow layers:

(#4)

Another installment of material on the (gay) porn register, following up on this posting, where I looked at some lexical features, saying about

man pussy, boy pussy, man cunt, boy cunt, man hole, [and] boy hole. These are terms strongly associated with gay porn (fiction, scripts of videos, and descriptions of videos) but not much used by gay men in everyday life; they are part of a specialized porn register, akin to the specialized registers in some other domains

Today there’s some more lexical stuff, but mostly it’s about the prosody of some writing about porn; like some other advertising copy, there’s some tendency for it to fall into metrically regular patterns.

The text is the copy on the front cover of the Dream World (1994) DVD:

(This image is cropped so as to eliminate naughty bits; the full image can be viewed on AZBlogX, here, along with some write-up about the flick.)

Lexical notes: the N – N compounds dick-pig and man-meat. The first I have heard in real life (though not often), to refer to a man who is an avid fellator (aka cock junkie). The second I have never encountered except in porn writing, where it’s one of a number of variants of cock or dick that writers use to avoid repeating these vernacular-standard terms; the strategy is a kind of “elegant variation”. In any case, thick man-meat is a frequent collocation, particularly satisfying because of the echo of dick in thick (as well as the actual semantic contribution of thick, thickness being, a desirable property of dicks), though

The text above comes in two parts — the maker’s copy and a quote from a TLA Video review, which is not metrical, though it has the half-rhyme dudes / chew and the rhyme shit / spit. The maker’s coipy, however, is three lines of trochaic tetrameter (with some short feet and some extra unaccented syllables.

Cock suckin’ dick pig Ethan Wright: SWW  SW  SW  S
Offers up his hot mouth: SW  SW  S  S
Slobbering and swallowing thick man-meat: SWWW  SWW  S  SW

I’m not claiming that the writers of this copy were aiming at trochaic tetrameter, only that in English this metrical pattern comes naturally to writers essaying short forms.

The back cover copy (visible on AZBlogX) continues the pattern (and is heavy with porn lexical items):

Hot sweaty man loads:  S  SW  S  S
Sucking and riding huge, stiff cocks:  SWW  SW  SW S

But the ad copy isn’t metrical:

Some people spend all their time dreaming about sex; the feel, the taste, the smell, the fantasy. Welcome to the world of David Bradley, a frustrated stud who spends his days dreaming about men.

Only stud suggests that this comes from the porn register.

To come: more Ethan Wright movies and overheated ad copy.

From my back files, this entertaining story in the MediaPost Marketing Daily on April 21st, “Haagen-Dazs Gelato Launch Uses ‘La Dolce Vita’ Theme” by Karlene Lukovitz, beginning:

Häagen-Dazs – the ice cream brand with the Danish-sounding name that was actually created by a Polish immigrant in the Bronx in 1961 — is celebrating all things Italian in its new campaign for the U.S. launch of its gelato line.

The “La Dolce Vita” campaign is kicking off with four TV spots airing on networks including Travel Channel, Food Network and HGTV (also viewable on the brand’s YouTube channel).

A 30-second spot shows an Italian couple arguing passionately in their native language (English subtitles provided), who are stopped short — and turn suddenly loving (at least momentarily) when they spot a carton of Häagen-Dazs Gelato and share spoonfuls of the treat. The spot closes with a screen message/English-language voiceover: “Häagen-Dazs Gelato — our new Italian masterpiece.”

The video:

Three 15-second spots each focus on one of the seven varieties of the gelato: Stracciatella, Limoncello and Cappuccino. In each case, the mouths of a series of Italian men and women are shown in close-up as each pronounces one syllable of the flavor’s name. Ending message: “New Häagen-Dazs Gelato. Even the name tastes good.”

(The other flavors in the gelato line are Sea Salt Caramel, Dark Chocolate Chip, Black Cherry, Amaretto and Vanilla Bean.)

“Our goal was to create a campaign that captures ‘La Dolce Vita’ and immerses our fans in the Italian culture through sight, sound and, of course, taste,” said Häagen-Dazs brand manager Cady Behles. According to the company, Häagen-Dazs is the first “super premium” brand to offer gelato.

Even the names taste good!

Here in Northern California we have quite a range of wonderful gelati and sorbets available, including some unusual ones (like single malt scotch gelato bars).

From the NYT on the 10th, an obit by William Grimes, “Cal Worthington, Car Dealer With Manic Ads, Dies at 92″, beginning:

Cal Worthington, a car dealer whose off-the-wall commercials, first broadcast in the 1950s, bombarded California television viewers for more than half a century and made him a pop culture legend, died on Sunday at his ranch in Orland, Calif.

The ads involved elaborate stunts; and

In the background, a chorus of male voices and frantic banjo pickers sang a jingle to the tune of “If You’re Happy and You Know It,” each of its many verses ending with the tag line: “Go see Cal, go see Cal, go see Cal.”

Hard to get it out of your head.

Grimes goes on:

The exuberant cheesiness of Mr. Worthington’s ads made him a folk hero, as much a part of California popular culture as Woodies with surfboards on the roof or Orange Julius stands.

I admire the phrasing “exuberant cheesiness”.

(For another posting on relentless pitchmen, see here.)

Freshly appearing at a local restaurant, BearBoat wines, from Sonoma. Entertaining name, with its /b/’s. And with cute labels, with this as a template:

(#1)

Particular instances have captions as well as the graphic.

I’ve done alliteration with /b/ before:

“Beer Bust at Blow Buddies” (link)

BOAR BRISTLE (link)

And then there are other entertaining wine names. An old favorite of mine is Bonny Doon‘s Le Cigare Volant:

(#2)

There are sites that collect bizarre and funny wine names, for instance this one, which offers, among other things:

Horse’s Ass, Hey Mambo, Goats do Roam [Côtes du Rhône], Plungerhead, Pinot Evil [See No Evil], Fat Bastard, Toasted Head, Gnarly Head, Arrogant Frog

In the NYT on the 12th, an obit, “Robert Taylor, Who Put Hand Soap in a Bottle, Dies at 77″ by John Schwartz:

Robert R. Taylor, a serial entrepreneur who popularized hand soap from a pump [Softsoap], gambling $12 million to prevent competitors from duplicating it, and fragrances like “Obsession,” which he advertised with artful eroticism, died on Aug. 29 in Newport Beach, Calif.

… Mr. Taylor built and sold 14 consumer products businesses during a long career, starting in 1964 with Village Bath Products, a company he founded with $3,000 to sell scented, hand-rolled soap balls through gift shops. Working initially out of his garage, he was soon selling more than 100 products through department stores.

It was serial entrepreneur that caught my eye. Easily understood, but new to me, I think. Not, however, new to the world.

OED3 (March 2013) on the adjective serial (in the revelant usage):

7. Of a person: that repeatedly or regularly performs a specified activity; inveterate, persistent; spec. (of a criminal) repeatedly committing the same offence and typically following a similar characteristic behaviour pattern. Also (of an action or practice): performed by the same person on a regular or sequential basis; habitual, recurrent.

Some of the more established uses of this type are treated separately. Recorded earliest in serial murderer n. [1947, below]

Later uses in this sense are probably influenced by serial killern., serial killing n.

1947   S. Kracauer in Partisan Rev. 14 162   A criminal who has been caught in the act of killing a woman,..who now frantically denies that he is the pursued serial murderer.

[later cites for: serial polygamy; serial golfers, swimmers, gymnasts; serial violent offenders; a serial espouser of every reactionary cause; a serial attacker]

[special uses in serial adulterer, serial entrepreneur, serial marriage, serial monogamist, serial monogamy, serial murderer, serial rapist]

serial entrepreneur n. an entrepreneur who starts up or runs multiple successive businesses, esp. one who moves on as soon as the challenge or thrill of making a venture profitable is over. [cites from 1991 on]

So Taylor was a serial entrepreneur before there was a word for it.

Passed on by Terry Bartlett on Facebook, this ad for Diamond Walnuts. The video:

(10/3/13)

You always want him to be more thoughtful and romantic. This Diamond Toasted Walnut Truffle recipe will make him go above and beyond.

Bake and You Shall Receive

On the ad campaign, ”Diamond launches ‘Diamond Nut Fantasies’ YouTube campaign via agency Deutsch LA” (10/11/13 by Tyler Brockington):

Diamond has launched a new campaign “Diamond Nut Fantasies” via Deutsch LA.

Recognizing that the average cook rarely get the praise and appreciation they deserve, this series of YouTube spots plays with the idea that baking them a treat with Diamond Nuts could help people transform to be the husband, neighbor, child and boyfriend of your dreams.

The ads were based on research that showed that Diamond Nut customers — two-thirds of whom were women–bake in large part not just because they care, but for the praise and compliments they get. So the agency imagined what it would be like if everyday people gushed with appreciation for the food they make.

Two notes:

Terry sent this to me because of the hunky daddy in the bathtub. Women are not the only people attracted by the ad.

But then there’s the pronominal anaphora in the last sentence, “So the agency imagined what it would be like if everyday people gushed with appreciation for the food they make.” — where the they refers not to everyday people, but to Diamond Walnut’s women customers, who figured so prominently in the preceding sentence.

(Advertising and the display of men’s bodies.)

From Chris Ambidge, a set of six vintage ads for Ivory Soap (99 44/100 % Pure … It Floats), mostly featuring men or boys bathing in groups.

The first has appeared on this blog before, in a posting on men in recruiting posters and ads (“Recruiting men” of 7/27/13):

  (#1)

Still in war-time:

  (#2)

Then in the showers at the gym:

  (#3)

Boyish playfulness:

  (#4)

  (#5)

And a solo bath:

  (#6)

Note the emphasis on cooling off by bathing with Ivory, plus the gentleness and safeness of the soap.

Commenting on my Ivory Soap posting (“and it floats!”) yesterday, Ann Burlingham asks about the images of naked boys and men in these vintage ads:

Do you or Chris [Ambidge, who sent me the images] have dates? The boys’ naked bottoms in Harper’s – it strikes me as normal, then that strikes me as odd, that a general-interest magazine would so easily have male nudity.

The ads seem mostly to be from 1918-19; the war-time in question is World War I. And their homoerotic subtext has been noticed by others — notably by Bruce H. Joffe in A Hint of Homosexuality?: ‘Gay’ and Homoerotic Imagery in American Print Advertising (2007).

From the Xlibris (self-publishing) site on the book:

Well before the June 1969 Stonewall riots threw open the closet doors to unleash and proclaim an unmistakable gay mantra, myriad clues — some subliminal, others overt — clearly ingrained the notion of homosexuality in advertisements appearing on the pages of many American periodicals. Hedonistically intertwined with homoerotic connections are advertising themes such as youth, vitality, and carnal pleasure. Gay intimacy and interaction, references to the male genitalia, and threats of sexual conquest of and between men can be documented in ads as far back as the late 1800s. And, although the images reflected in their advertising mirror are fewer and farther between, women who prefer the company of other women similarly have been goosed and gandered by Madison Avenue.

In this richly illustrated tapestry hinting at homosexuality in American advertising, Bruce H. Joffe examines and analyzes over 200 suggestive ads … concluding that gay imbroglio and innuendo tease at us amid subliminal elements seductively perceived and strategically portrayed.

The writing in this blurb grates on me — imbroglio is an especially poor choice of words, and “subliminal elements seductively perceived and strategically portrayed” is drastically overwritten — but a trove of vintage ads would be worth having.

On Joffe:

A Professor of Communication who has taught Gay & Lesbian Studies courses at George Mason University, Dr. Joffe is now on the faculty of Mary Baldwin College where he continues to explore sexual minorities, the media, and cultural norms.

In recent advertising news: from Adweek on the 11th, “Charmin Thinks Twice About Its ‘Asgard’ Joke, Even Though Twitter Loved It: Gone but not forgotten” by David Gianatasio:

(Hat tip to Victor Steinbok.)

First, Charmin cracks the Internet up with its potty humor. Then it wipes its Twitter clean.

On Friday, the toilet-paper brand squeezed out a triumphant movie-related pun—”We’ve always been an #Asgardian”—along with the image of a cartoon bear wearing a winged-helmet and brandishing TP as though it were Thor’s hammer. The titular character of Thor: The Dark World, which opened in theaters that very day, hails from Asgard, and Asgard sounds like “ass guard,” so most commenters were bowled over by the pithy poop-culture tie-in. However, the tweet was, alas, quickly and mysteriously flushed from the system. Does that make sense when the brand was so clearly on a roll? Well, the tweet’s disappearance keeps the story from stalling, so it just might be an example of brilliant marketing strategy we can all get behind.

The full story has even more toilet language play. It gets old very fast.

From an ad for the Teeter machines designed to stretch you out and make you feel better, a reference to the “benefits of inversion”.

Inversion has multiple senses, including some in linguistics, but also:

Sexual inversion is a term used by sexologists, primarily in the late 19th and early 20th century, to refer to homosexuality. Sexual inversion was believed to be an inborn reversal of gender traits: male inverts were, to a greater or lesser degree, inclined to traditionally female pursuits and dress and vice versa. The sexologist Richard Freiherr von Krafft-Ebing described female sexual inversion as “the masculine soul, heaving in the female bosom”. In its emphasis on gender role reversal, the theory of sexual inversion resembles transgender, which did not yet exist as a separate concept at the time.

Initially confined to medical texts, the concept of sexual inversion was given wide currency by Radclyffe Hall’s 1928 lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness, which was written in part to popularize the sexologists’ views. Published with a foreword by the sexologist Havelock Ellis, it consistently used the term “invert” to refer to its protagonist, who bore a strong resemblance to one of Krafft-Ebing’s case studies. (Wikipedia link)

In this quaint outmoded sense, I am a classic sexual invert. Ok, without the cross-sex identification.

The website says:

Take Cold-EEZE® whenever you start to feel cold symptoms.
Our unique zinc gluconate formula releases zinc ions to fight your cold virus.

Cold-EEZE® lozenges have been clinically proven to shorten the duration of the common cold by almost half. View the clinical studies…

So, “clinically proven”. Let’s be very generous and assume that there are some actual clinical tests (pitting treated patients vs. untreated ones) here. But then the commercials shift from general claims to a specific one, with a company spokesman saying:

I guarantee Cold-EEZE will shorten your cold or your money back.

A money-back claim that could never be cashed in: how could anyone know that their particular cold would have been longer if they hadn’t taken Cold-EEZE? It’s a conflict between (possibly valid) generalizations and specific predictions about single events.

Today’s Zippy:

(#1)

The characters pass on.

On Bazooka Joe:

Bazooka Joe is a comic strip character, featured on small comics included inside individually wrapped pieces of Bazooka bubblegum. He wears a black eyepatch, lending him a distinctive appearance. He is one of the more recognizable American advertising characters of the 20th century, due to worldwide distribution, and one of the few identifiable ones associated with a candy.

(#2)

And his end:

Bazooka bubble gum axes Bazooka Joe comics after 59 years, by Kevin Melrose (December 3, 2012)

As part of an overhaul of its logo and packaging, the 65-year-old Bazooka bubblegum is replacing its red, white and blue color scheme and dropping the tiny Bazooka Joe comic strip that’s wrapped each piece of the pink candy since 1953. Yes, first Twinkies, and now the eyepatch-wearing Joe [and his turtleneck-wearing buddy Mort]. (link)

And Elsie:

Elsie the Cow is a cartoon cow that has been used as the logo for the Borden Dairy Company since 1936.

Elsie was created in the 1930s to symbolize the “perfect dairy product”. For a time in the mid-1940s when she was voiced by Hope Emerson, she was better known than some human celebrities, and Elsie the Cow remains among the most recognizable product logos in the United States and Canada.

… Elsie’s husband, Elmer the Bull, was later lent to Borden’s chemical division as the mascot for Elmer’s Glue. Their offspring included Beulah, Beauregard (born 1948), and twins Larabee and Lobelia (born 1957). Elsie has earned such honorary degrees from Universities as Doctor of Bovinity, Doctor of Human Kindness and Doctor of Ecownomics.

(#3)

From Ellen Seebacher on Facebook, this puzzling ad:

  (#1)

Cod loins?

Loin is an unusual body-part term. AHD2 on the word:

the part of the body on both sides of the spine between the lowest (false) ribs and the hipbones.

• (loins) chiefly literary the region of the sexual organs, esp. when regarded as the source of erotic or procreative power: he felt a stirring in his loins at the thought.

• (loin) a large cut of meat that includes the vertebrae of the loins: loin of pork with potatoes.

The trick is to figure out what the counterpart of the loin(s) is on a fish. For comparison, here are graphics of cuts of beef in US and British usage:

(#2, US)

(#3, Brit)

Heard, endlessly, on cable tv, an ad for a hair-removal system:

It’s not a razor. It’s not a laser. It’s No-No.

It’s also not a waxing treatment, but no doubt the razor / laser rhyme was hard to resist. So what is it?

Turns out it burns body hair away. Ouch.

It claims to be painless, but this is (for obvious reason) disputed by many users on the web. And there are many postings about the difficulties of negotiating the money-back guarantee.

From Steven Levine, this remarkable advertising image:

Elsie the Cow, in a maid’s apron and nothing else — yielding a racy image — offering a very substantial breakfast. Smiling and dancing.

More on Elsie here.