The Years Without a Santa Clause: Soft Lite Lenses (1944)

What says Christmas more than a pair of drugstore cheaters? Yep, buy cheap non-prescription glasses for granny, that'll go over like a sack of coal. Apparently they were big once, they had offices in New York, Toronto, and London and now they're gone from the face of the Earth. Maybe they only serve elves?

The Years Without a Santa: BVD Pajamas (1943)

1943 and Santa's disposed with the jeeps and army helmets, stopped mentioning the war, and started selling underwear. Things are grim folks. Still, I dig the paisley jammies. The guy in tan looks like a Star Trek extra.

The Years Without a Santa - Big Yank (1944)

Now Santa's gone all lumberjack. It's like the guy on the Brawny paper towel package put on a Santa mask and hat. And the message, well nothing to do with the holiday. No product pimping. No encouragement to buy. Just...the war - always the war.

I've started to miss those Whitman ads. Chocolate fell victim to rationing along with bacon, rubber, gasoline, and new cars. Everything became preserve, reuses, and recycle. Everything was channeling into the war effort.

The Years without a Santa: Camel Cigarettes (1943)

Prince Albert in a Can? Santa's back to selling monkeys for your back. Now in the nice gingerbread cancer ward style.

The Years Without a Santa: Pennsylvania Railroad (1943)

Before the war the rich could board a Constellation or Clipper for exotic locals but for the average Joe and Jane it was trains and automobiles and the occasional ocean liner. War changed all that. The skies (and seas for that fact) weren't friendly and even if they were wartime rationing would have curtailed non-military travel.

Still, a the December 1943 issue of Life Magazine Pennsylvania Railroad ran this ad touting its war-effort tonnage. I've started calling this sort of ad "patriotism banking", the hope that touting a company's patriotism would equal dollars in the post-war economy.

So this Christmas, while Aunt Martha is alone on the coast instead of safe in the bosom of her family, just think of all those tanks that made the trip she couldn't.

The Years Without a Santa: Stromberg-Carlson (1943)

1943 and reality has come home for Christmas. This realization is shown eloquently in this ad for Stromberg-Carlson radios, morphing from pre-war ignorant bliss to early days "we're going to show 'em how it's done" bravado, to the long bloody trail to the war's end. It is interesting that Stromberg-Calrson hasn't de-German-ed their name, though.

The Years Without a Santa: Whitman Sampler (1942)

A spot of color from 1942! While pouring over ads from that year, this one practically screams at you for its use of color. No black-and-white and grim Santa Clause, just a box of chocolates and some holly. In fact the only mention of the war is the admonition not to forget those in the service. Apparently the war hadn't come home to the Whitman company. That would change when sugar rationing hit the US. But, for the moment, they still were selling their samplers in the same way they'd always sold them.

The Years Without a Santa: Old Gold (1942)

Another wartime Santa, this time riding a jeep through the sky in spite of gasoline and rubber rationing. Jeep Santa distributes Old Gold Cigarettes and...books...as he flies through the sky. Bad being beaned by a carton of smokes, worse by a dictionary.

The Years Without a Santa: Roadmaster Bicycles (1942)

I had a Roadmaster bike as a kid. It was what hipsters would call a 'fixie' - no gears and pedal brakes. I rode that bike all over, it was my first means of freedom. I would have been out of luck in 1942, though, because The Cleveland Welding Company, makers of Roadmaster bikes, was a vital war industry and had switched production. A decade after the war they'd be bought out by AMF and eventually become known for shoddy, low-quality bicycles.

The ad features a somewhat less war-mad Santa. He's not shoving cigarettes or bayonets into the kid's hands. I guess that makes him more the jolly old elf we know nowadays.

A Wartime Santa

Remember when a carton of cigarettes was a good Christmas gift? Me either. I certainly remember a lot of smoking during the holidays. I remember coming home with smoker's cough from a long Christmas Eve at the grandparents' house at the age of nine. I can remember lying on my back by the Christmas tree, breathing the cool, clear air, and staring up at the fog-bank of second-hand smoke that hung just a few feet above where I lay. It was like being in an episode of Emergency, only without sirens or Randolph Mantooth.

Anyway, the ad's from 1942 - gasoline rationing had just started, the US had just bombed Italy, and there was a long and bloody road ahead before peace would return. But light up boys, you may be dead tomorrow so why worry about a little lung cancer?

Don't Call Long Distance - 1942

Santa Grinch would like to dissuade you from talking with your friends and loved ones at Christmas time. 1942 was a grim time, grim with war, grim with rationing, grim with ads that shamed you if you had any holiday cheer. Even Santa had turned to a boiled-faced shrew, chiding that the phone lines were too filled with the calls of people more important than you with better things to do that wish your 92 year old granny merry Christmas. Merry Christmas? Bah, any fool who calls to wish Merry Christmas should be buried with their ration book shoved down their throat.

Funny, now practically nobody makes long distance calls. The rise of the cell phone and national coverage plans has nearly eliminated the phrase from our lexicon along with operators and phone books. An entire hipster culture is waiting - the culture for hard-wired, dial telephones mounted in artisan booths with hand-crafted books of phone numbers. Maybe there'll be a Brooklyn eatery where you have to put a dime into a pay phone to call the operator who will connect you to the wait staff. One moment please...

So this year give the gift of a cold shoulder. Santa Phone is watching you and he knows if you're buying black market ration stamps or not.

Throne to the Dogs - 100 Years Ago Today

The life of a king isn't all it's cracked up to be, well, at least sometimes. In the case of two kings of the 1920's, Alexander I of Greece and Christian X of Denmark, the problems that trouble the royal head manifested in very different ways.

Alexander I's father, Constantine I, was a supporter of his brother-in-law, Kaiser Wilhelm II, in his war against the allied forces. This stand put him at odds with his prime minister who wanted to join the British, French, and Russians in support of Greek minorities in the Ottoman Empire in hopes of territorial gains. This split resulted in the formation of a parallel government. In July 1916, arsonists set fire to the Tatoi Palace and the royal family narrowly escaped with their lives. Constantine surrendered his power on June 10, 1917 and entered self-exile while maintaining the crown. The Allies selected Alexander as the man to assume the crown, he was their third choice as new monarch, owing to other candidates' German leanings or unwillingness to take on the role.

Imagine the fate of a king, installed by conquerors, stripped of power, and told by his father that he held the crown in trust only. Alexander's family departed for exile, leaving him at the Tatoi Palace surrounded by supporters of the prime minister who'd engineered his family's downfall. The Greek revolutionaries and Allies didn't like him, the palace was staffed with anti-royalists and enemies of the former king, and the king's ministers openly called him the son of a traitor to Greece. Alexander was surrounded by enemies and spies and a virtual prisoner in his own palace.

A day after assuming the crown, Alexander revealed what would become known as his scandal. He had been involved with a woman named Aspasia Manos, a Greek commoner, whom he wanted to marry. On his way to exile, Alexander's father made him promise to hold off on the wedding until the end of the war, however isolation led him to disobey this order. It would take the aid of Aspasia's brother-in-law and three attempts before the couple was secretly joined on November 17, 1919. The kings prime minister leaked news of the wedding and Aspasia was forced to leave Greece, finally ending up in Paris. Six months later Alexander was allowed to join her there, but the couple were forbidden to attend public events together.

The couple were allowed to return to Greece in 1920 and, though their marriage was legalized, Aspasia would not be granted the title of Queen. On October 2 of that same year, Alexander was bitten by a monkey and contracted septicemia and was dead by October 25th.

The crisis faced by King Christian X of Denmark wasn't one of love, but pride. Christian was an authoritarian ruler who strongly believed in the rights and powers of royalty. In the wake of World War I, Denmark was faced with the question of how to handle the reunification between Denmark and Schleswig which had been a Danish fiefdom before the war. Denmark had lost the region to Prussia during the Second War of Schleswig in 1864 and Germany's defeat offered an opportunity to bring the territory under Danish rule.

The Treaty of Versailles stipulated that the fate of Schleswig be determined by two votes: one in northern Schleswig and another in central Schleswig while southern Schleswig would remain German owing to its overwhelmingly ethnic German population. The result put northern Schleswig in Danish control while the central region voted to remain German. Danish Prime Minister Carl Theodor Zahle determined that reunification with northern Schleswig should go forward with the central and southern regions remaining part of Germany, but settling the matter wouldn't be so easy.

King Christian sided with Danish nationalists who desired to see Germany permanently weakened after the war and ordered the Prime Minister to break up the central region, ceding key parts to Denmark. The Prime Minister, citing the fact Denmark had been a parliamentary democracy since 1901 refused to carry out the king's orders and resigned within days. In the wake of Zahle's resignation, the king dissolved parliament and attempted to put a "temporary caretaker cabinet" in place which leaned toward his conservative, royalist sentiment. Demonstrations and a nearly revolutionary atmosphere mushroomed in Denmark and it seemed the monarchy would topple until the king reversed course, opened negotiations with Social Democrats, and eventually stood down, dismissing the government he'd installed and putting a compromise cabinet in place until elections were held later in the year. This stumble would become known as the Easter Crisis of 1920 and would be the last time a Danish monarch took political action without the full support of parliament. Fortunately for King Christian, his actions in World War II would return the shine to the Danish crown.

Throne to the Dogs

King of Greece (to Danish King) - Yes, these are rotten times for men in our line.

Two different kings and two very different problems, but both show up in the same cartoon. Appearing in the July 1920 issue of The Judge Magazine, King Alexander and Christian are depicted sharing their royal woes on a train ride. 

Thanksgiving Feed - Popcorn

I'm not sure where I came across this ad. Somehow it wound up in my chaff pile, waiting to be sorted, and I stumbled across it this morning while searching for food-related materials for the season of feasting that is Thanksgiving. I'd love to have one of these machines. Not sure where I'd put it, but the look of it is just amazing. It speaks of a time when popcorn was enough of a treat to be vended from a bubblegum-style machine at fairs and on boardwalks across the country. Simpler times, I guess. Then again I've come to realize that times never were as simple as we'd like to think. Especially when I'm guessing this ad comes from the era of the Great Depression and World War II.

Think you're at a railroad depot, waiting for the train to the coast and basic training before heading overseas to who-knows-where to face people who mean to murder you and everyone you love. You're surrounded by a thousand strangers, it's your first time away from home and may wind up being your last. A cold air blows through the station carrying with it the smell of popcorn and your mind goes back to the Grand Theater on Main Street, your best gal, and sneaking a cuddle while the Wolfman chewed the scenery and for a moment you're home and safe and there is no war, no hatred, and no looming shadow of death sitting on the bench beside you. Maybe that's a big part of what Thanksgiving's all about.

Thanksgiving Feed - Fleischmann's Yeast

I can't help but think if World War II happened today, Fleischmann's would have changed its name to shed its German roots. It would have become "Freedom Yeast" or "Victory Fungus" or something. Instead they opted for one of the most dystopian, steampunk soldiers depicted during the war years.

I had to look up the reference to Nazi use of a drug called Previtin as an alertness aid by Nazi soldiers. The drug usage was revealed in a book written by former Nazi soldier Heinrich Boll. Apparently bread is better than meth, though, which is why we now have such a rye problem in America.

Thanksgiving Feed - Meat and Plasma (1944)

Here they are again, those proud purveyors of all things meaty, the American Meat Institute and their wartime push for blood and meat. I guess it's meant to encourage those on the home front to give plasma for the troops, but there's something a little chilling when the guys who run slaughterhouses start calling for human blood. It just doesn't sit right, you know?

Of course we get the Norman Rockwell style illustration of all the good Americans waiting on line to give blood, but a couple of other things struck me as well. Firstly, who would have enough ration coupons to get all the meat shown in the illustration of "a war meat-meal"? My understanding was meat was among the most restricted foods. Second, I have to wonder how many of those cold cuts shown in that same illustration had traded in their ethnically German names for American patriot-ized names? We went through the whole "freedom fries" debacle, I wonder if they had "war weenies" or "victory-wurst"?

Thanksgiving Feed - Treet (1944)

We've visited the red-headed stepchild of Spam, Treet before, but this time it comes with a side dish of patriotism. During World War II every ad had two things in common: there'd be something about affordability because of rationing and there'd be something about how the producers of said food were supporting the war effort and the boys "over there".

I don't have the nerve to read about Treet Shortcakes...I really don't. I guess to me a "shortcake" is something that comes with strawberries and a dollop of whipped cream not some gelatinous lubricant from a Treet-tin. On a side note, Thomas Dolby's One of Our Submarines would have been totally different with the line "winter boys are freezing in their Treet tins..." wouldn't it?

100 Years Ago: Ominous Overtones

Let America Beware: Some Day the Sun will
Rise Above the Stars
Kladderdatsch, 1916

On August 14, 1914 Japan entered World War I, formerly declaring war on Germany at the request of the British government. For doing so, the Japanese government had been promised possession of all German colonial territories in the Pacific should the Allies win the war. Japanese forces took possession of Shandong province in China and cut off the German settlement at Tsingtao by October and went on to seize the Mariana, Caroline, and Marshall Islands.

In 1915 Japan presented China with what would become known as the Twenty-One Demands. These saw Japan as the new and most important power in the Pacific. China would become little more than a Japanese protectorate and the colonial privileges enjoyed by the European Allies and United States would be rescinded in favor of Japanese interests.

This little propaganda cartoon printed in 1916 by the German paper Kladderdatsch (a paper that would later be a major promoter of the Nazi party) was meant to stir up animosities between the U.S. and the Allies. The hope (seemed to be) that the threat to American colonial concerns in China and the Pacific would be enough to fracture the alliance and stop arms shipments to Europe. Instead, the Twenty-One Demands proved so unpopular with the Allies that Japan withdrew the final group of them, leaving colonial possessions in the Pacific and China in tact until World War II. The damage done to the Japanese reputation, though, was irreversible...they had become a naval power, but would never have the close relationship with Europe they'd enjoyed before. Strange how, in a way, Kladderdatsch predicted the eventual strike on Pearl Harbor, though...

Holy WTF!

I spend a lot of time looking for seasonal ads and articles to feature on the blog. Like most anyone who is into blogging finds themselves spending time asking the "what next" question and that question sometimes leads you into strange and disturbing places. Such was the fall of 2015 which led me to the ad below.

It's an ad for a Textron, a company which is still in existence today. They started out with textiles and since have diversified, owning properties such as Bell Helicopter. Back in the 40's when this ad ran in Life Magazine they were happy to pimp synthetic pajamas and underwear. At least I assume that was the intention of  what has become known as the ad.

Let's dive in a little, and I'll let the margins run wild so that you get the full effect. Just let it soak in for a few moments...

Nothing like a little homoerotic log-pulling to sell PJ's. Most of the time I chalk the squiggly feeling that comes from some of these ads to the times. There are plenty of sexist, racist, and elitist ads which are truly cringe worthy, but this is something different. A dreamland log-ride must be a euphemism somewhere.

Meanwhile the centaur-deer women are looking on and giggling. Yes, I said centaur deer women. There they are, clad in nothing but antlers and garland. By the way, for those of you who aren't familiar with deer, it's only the fellows who've got the antlers. The rules may be different for half human magical creatures, one can never really be sure about these things. I'm only guessing that Textron consulted the appropriate magic tomes.

The artist is an Austrian by the name of Fredrick "Fritz" Siebel. Fritz came to the US in 1936, fleeing growing unrest at the urging of his Grandmother. He struggled to save his family from Hitler's Nazi forces, but was unsuccessful and they perished at the hands of the Nazis. He went to work for Paramount Pictures where he worked producing movie posters from a New York theater on Broadway.

In 1938 he entered a poster contest sponsored by the Devoe and Reynolds Painting Company and judged by Eleanor Roosevelt. The aim of the contest was to promote the importance of protecting the country's security in the face of escalating foreign tensions, and his winning entry Someone Talked was displayed in Radio City and used by the Office of War Information (a predecessor of the OSS).

Fritz would return to Europe as a member of the United States Army where he served from 1941 - 1943. Thereafter he went on to be an illustrator creating magazine covers and ads for Jello and Joy Detergent as well as (apparently) Textron. He'd later illustrate children's books, hopefully without log rides or centauresses.

So, there you have it, a trip down the weird turnpike.

Thanksgiving Dinner - Meat Pie

Okay, so it's not technically a food ad, but it does have a budget-saver recipe. Hey, what more could you ask? Besides, I omitted a contribution to the holiday groaning board yesterday so I owe you a double-dose.

This ad ran in 1942, the dark days of World War II when Thanksgiving meant being glad the boys had finally broken out of El Alamein and the Rommel and the Nazis were in retreat. On the home front mom was welding bomber fuselages while dad was carrying a rifle and rationing was in full swing so the big Turkey Day dinner wasn't all that big.

Hundreds of Victory recipes were printed in magazines and newspapers, all promising to stretch a dollar and put a hot, healthy meal on the table with as little effort as possible. Hence the Budget-Saver Meat Pie! Basically meatloaf topped with mashed potatoes. Nothing says "victory" like mashed potatoes.

But, maybe I'm missing the point here. You see, today we're in the midst of our own war. We've been in the midst of it for almost two decades now and the only thing on the horizon seems to be escalation as all the Middle East unravels and the Russians start putting their toe in to test the temperature. All the while we're still fixated on football, food, and the fakery of reality television. We don't share the pains of war, not even in the slightest, so why should we care to avoid it? It's become something that happens over there and involves a bunch of poor kids and immigrants in uniform. Nothing the privileged classes should worry about, we just have another helping of lotus and sleep on while others bleed.

So, maybe this Thanksgiving we should omit the turkey. Maybe this year we should send it to the troops or the impoverished or the refugees who've lost everything to conflict and hatred. Maybe we should set an empty platter in the center of the table, warmed for the day when we can truly be thankful that the war has ended and the families who've been torn apart by these conflicts can sit together around their own tables in their own homes.

The End of World War II - 69th Anniversary of the Bombing of Nagasaki

Mushroom Cloud over Nagasaki as seen from Koyagi-jima on August 9, 1945

Today marks the 69th anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Nagasaki, an event that would lead to the end of World War II and the beginning of a nuclear debate that continues to this day.

On August 9, 1945, at 11:01, the American B29A Superfortress piloted by Major Charles W. Sweeney opened his bomb bay doors and dropped Fat Man over the Japanese industrial center of Nagasaki. The weapon exploded at an altitude of 1650 feet above a tennis court located half way between the Mitsubishi Steel and Arms Works and the Mitsubishi-Urakami Ordnance Works which made torpedoes for the Japanese war effort. The resulting 21 kiloton explosion generated temperatures of over 7000˚F and winds reaching 624 mph, vaporizing its victims and reducing much of the city to burning rubble in an atomic flash. Estimates of the death toll range from 39000 to 80000, and six days later the Japanese surrendered, ending World War II.