Ridgid Tools Calendars
I’m not sure what route I took while clicking along the information superhighway (are all the kids still calling it that these days?) but I ended up in a little town of George Petty pin up girl artwork, liked what I saw, asked around, and then stumbled upon a calendar he’d produced for a company called Ridgid. You know how it is then; you have a few drinks and before you know it you’re staring at another calendar, only this one’s from the 1970s, not the 1950s, and you’re quite impressed by just how things have changed, yet stayed the same. All of which is a poorly prosaic way of saying I’d like to showcase some of those images from the calendars right here. It’s the sort of thing I do. These images came from these two Flickr albums: 1975-6 Ridgid Tools Calendar and Blog Photos but there are plenty of other sources. 1953 Calendar The 1953 calendar for Ridgid Tools is the one by artist George Petty. The 1950s was a time of innuendo. Why look! It’s a small woman with a large tool between her legs! This woman is touching a knob at the end of a long shaft. What can the underlying message be? Astride a tool, ready to get it all lubricated while a knob is pressed up against her backside. Filth! Well now, that posture can’t be good for her back. Health and safety rules were clearly different back then. And working with machinery in ballet shoes? Things really have changed. 1975-76 Calendar The two year calendar for Ridgid Tools was photographed by Peter Gowland. Gone was the subtle innuendo of earlier years; in the 1970s the important thing was to show some skin and encourage blue collar workers to pin the calendar on the wall and get that brand name screwed into the brain. Of course, if you could get a woman to get her hands gripping the rod of some tool then that was good too. The challenge with the 1970s photos is guessing just what the actual tool is that’s being promoted. Take this one, for example: if I didn’t know any better I’d assume it was some kind of plasma weapon as used by warrior women of some pretty awesome bikini planet. “I need to measure something curved, something that would easily cover a person, but is there such a tool? Hang on! Didn’t I see the perfect thing on my Ridgid Tools calendar? I did!” Another mystery tool that I’m going to assume is a high tech bit of equipment for clubbing fish to death because why else would...
Mastertronic Games
This link – Mastertronic Bestsellers – will show you three charts showing the top-selling Mastertronic games across all of its released formats as well as total number of releases year-on-year for the various 8-bit and 16-bit platforms. I had a Sinclair ZX Spectrum during the peak years of Mastertronic’s game releases and it’s nice to see just how popular such titles as Finders Keepers and Molecule Man – two of my favourites – really...
1970s Porno Style
If you ever take a look at the pictures of a pornographic magazine from the 1970s – and if I know you half as well as I think I do then I know you do – then you’ll no doubt have been blown away by the awesome pre-sex fashions and sex-location styling on display. Let’s take a quick look at some truly amazing displays from the golden age of porno publications. It’s a party – you can tell from that one decoration on the wall – in a time when it was perfectly okay to expose your fellow diners to cigarette smoke, with a mix of casual and smart casual wear on display, and the two stand out things for me are the gentleman’s shirt in the second photo (he’s clearly taken off his jacket sometime between the first and second ones, a sure indication things are warming up) and the candles. Look how thin they are! Who uses those candles these days? Aren’t you supposed to use those candles to light other candles? Oh well. And I’m not even going to guess what he’s trying to do in that second picture either. Some things just don’t have a modern equivalence. One man and three women has to mean sexy sex is mere moments away but cast that thought aside for one moment and let your eyes gaze lovingly on the half-height wood paneling. Heavenly. And yet even that beauty of 1970s design is overshadowed by our male protagonist’s suit. When you combine a suit of that colour and that apparent fabric with sideburns of that majesty you know you’re looking at a sex god in human form. Notice too that all the women are sporting bold necklaces. In the 1970s that was a sure sign that women were up for a little bit of how’s your father. Or that they really liked necklaces. One of those two. “Oh, Marjorie, Marjorie, Marjorie!” laughed the blonde as she perused the photo album of a recent trip to Amsterdam on her friend’s lap. “See, now I love your green dress – I really do – but it’s just a little plain for this era. You need to find yourself something with a little more daring; a little more wow!; a little more horrific clashing of patterns with each and every thing around you. Something like I’ve got on. Hey! Is that Ted’s arse in the corner by the canal? Great necklace, by the way! Fancy a bit of how’s your father?” It’s the same setting and the same brunette (admittedly sporting something a little more suitable for the period; I’m so...
Old Magazine Adverts
I’ve got a thing for old magazine adverts whether they’re the full page glossy ones or, as in this case, those small ones grouped together enticing people to part with money in return for things that invariably don’t live up to their promises. Here are a few I found in an old English language version of a 1970s Spanish...
An Animal Between The Sheets
I’ve translated a page from a 1976 Mexican photocomic just for...
A Trip To The Orient
I’ve recently been looking through some of the public domain pictures scanned from books put online by the Internet Archive on Flickr and happened to spot a photo from a book called A Trip to the Orient, The Story of a Mediterranean Cruise by Robert Urie Jacob, published in 1907. The photos appealed to my love of street photography and travelling to exotic places. In addition to the pictures – you can see the full set tagged here – you can also, of course, read the book online: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/31609/31609-h/31609-h.htm. Some quotes and photos appear below: An interesting feature of the book is the large number of illustrations made from artistic photographs, all of which have been kindly contributed by amateur photographers. It contains nearly two hundred illustrations of views or incidents in Funchal, Granada, Algiers, Malta, Athens, Constantinople, Jerusalem, Cairo, Luxor, Naples, and Nice, reproduced from photographs taken by Mr. L. O. Smith, Rev. G. B. Burnwood, Mr. Charles Louis Sicarde, Mr. Franklin D. Edmunds, Mr. Roberts LeBoutellier, Mrs. Charles S. Crosman, Miss M. Florence Pannebaker, Mr. Walter F. Price, Mr. S. L. Schumo, Mr. George C. Darling, Mr. Howard E. Pepper, Mr. John W. Converse, Mr. C. Edwin Webb, and Mr. Edwin Alban Bailey. It was yet early when we ascended the deck, but the sun was shining brightly. Funchal appeared like a beautiful picture. Overhead was the azure sky of a summer day; before us, stirred by a gentle breeze, glistened in blue and silver the waters of the harbor; on the curving shore, tier above tier, reflecting the sunshine, rose the white and yellow stone buildings of the city surmounted by roofs of red tiling; above the city, white cottages amidst a dense foliage of green shrubbery dotted the steep hillsides, and beyond, but seeming very near, higher mountains formed a dark and appropriate background. As twilight was settling down we arrived on schedule time at the white stone station in Granada where carriages stood in waiting to convey us to the hotels. The Spanish drivers strove to surpass each other in speed. Our coachman lashed his horses till they ran like a run-away team. Regardless of anyone in the streets, grazing wagons by the way, overtaking and passing carriages ahead, he gave us the wildest ride we had ever taken. This chariot race to the hotel, a distance of over a mile, happily ended without accident or collision. On the porch of the Mosque we put our feet into the loose slippers, a Moslem attendant tied them on as carefully as the clumsy things could be tied, and then, accompanied by him, we entered the...
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