Hang on. I haven’t put up a post about sexist advertising in the computer industry yet? Really? Everyone else has. I must rectify this omission now!
Women have been used to advertise inappropriately just about everything you can think of. Sex, so the saying goes, sells. No sex also quite likely sells but it’s nowhere near as much fun to storyboard as sex-selling advertisements. And so for as long as there have been marketing people and as long as there have been things that anybody might buy there have been adverts for those things featuring women. Scantily-clad women. Often with barely even a passing thought to a connection with the product being sold.
I probably saw a great many of the following adverts for computer games and machines featuring provocatively-posed women in various states of undress growing up and yet I can honestly say that at no point did I ever consider the merits of a purchase based on the model showing off her wares alongside the main product. Perhaps I’m just weird or an outlier as far as the advertising execs are concerned, or perhaps the advertising execs just didn’t care and fancied some auditions and photography sessions with young starlets anyway. I’m pretty sure that’s at least partially true. Anyway, let’s marvel at some of the wonderfully awful means of promoting computer software and hardware over the past few decades.
From a publication called Vidiot and maybe this was simply showing that gaming was as much something for women as it was for men. Maybe. Maybe the two references to “end” in the blurb on the picture as well as describing the gamesplayer as a “lovely miss” aren’t innuendo and sexist condescension respectively. Maybe. All I know is that I wouldn’t want to be anywhere near a centipede in shorts that tight and short. Although if I were in shorts that tight and short it’s quite likely any nearby centipede would scurry off in the opposite direction as fast as its multitude of legs could propel it.
A roaring fire. A man in a suit – you can trust those sorts of men – and a beauty in quite possibly just bra and panties. And let’s have a read of the advert’s copy:
Tuesday night Eileen dropped in and we balanced her checkbook on it. If you knew Eileen you’d know that’s a first.
Wednesday, Judy and I computed the principal and interest on the new car she wants to buy.
Someone fan me down; that copy is some hot, damn copy. Yeah, I think we all know what sort of balancing and computing’s been going on with Mister I’ve Bought Myself An APF Electronics Imagination Machine And Now The Ladies Flock To My Floor. Dirty beast!
There are many, many things wrong with this Atari arcade game.
- The quality of workmanship with whatever the hell the precursor to Photoshop was in 1973 is utterly atrocious. Are the couple in front of the machine or behind it? Part of the machine is showing through her arm and her dress! Who the hell looked over this design and said “yes, that’s perfect!”
- The game is called Gotcha and the picture is of a man apparently sexually assaulting a woman. Who the hell looked over this design and said “yes, that’s perfect!”
- The controllers on the machine look like breasts. There’s a reason for that. They’re supposed to be breasts. Who the hell looked over this design and said “yes, that’s perfect!”
To the victor go the spoils. This was the tag line that made it to print. Rejected tag lines include:
- Plunge into battle.
- My eyes are up here.
- Fight. Wank. Repeat.
- Rape and pillage. Heavy on the rape.
Call me a sceptical old fool but I’ve got a feeling that the sort of person who’s looking to buy a piece of hardware to bypass region restrictions on Zelda III won’t actually know what the two half-dressed women in the advert are. I know what they are, though. They’re distracting. They’re primarily distracting because they’re not wearing the same type of underwear. What’s with that? That’s the kind of thing that plays on my mind.
Now, at first glance you could argue that there is a justification for putting a picture of a cheerleader in an advert for an American Football arcade game but this only really stands up to scrutiny if the proclaimed “one or two player head to head action” includes the option to play as an actual cheerleader making use of the joystick to twirl and jump and wave pom poms around. I suspect that option isn’t there. I suspect it might have originally been there and proved too popular so was taken out. I suspect my last suspicion is not actually correct.
I had an Amiga but I never had this. I’m not sure I would have mastered the CLI (the Command Line Interface in case you’re wondering (you aren’t, I know)) had I had this; it certainly doesn’t look like the man on the cover is mastering any CLI any time soon either. Where is his left arm by the way? My best guess for the cover design is that there is no possible way in this universe to make a cover enticing for young men who may or may not want to understand just how limited the commands in any CLI really are so why not stick a sexy woman on there? When your brain subliminally starts adding letters to that acronym – clit, clitoris, climax, Cliff Clavin – then it’s not difficult to see how this product quite possibly sold in the tens or even dozens.
Aha! I see what this advert is saying. She dyes her hair! She may look like a blonde but you’re in for a “dark adventure” if you can win her over in the game. I’m almost certain that’s the underlying message. Yeah, must be. If you zoom in you might just be able to see her roots showing.
“Bill, we’ve got a war game called Devastators. Shoot me some ideas.”
“Shoot! Ha! Love it! Great pun Geoff!”
“Don’t arselick me Bill. I want to hear ideas, not fawning platitudes.”
“Right you are Geoff. Well, it’s a war game. How about a picture of war?”
“A picture of war! Are you out of your mind!? This is 1988, not 2088! An actual picture of war will disappoint the crap out of anyone who buys this game. We won’t have photorealistic graphics until near the end of the next century and you damn well know it!”
“You’re right, you’re right. Okay then… let me think. It’s called Devastators… we need… to show… some devastators…”
“I’m listening Bill.”
“You know what might just be a pair of devastators?”
“What’s that Bill?”
“Tits.”
“Holy. Shit. Sticks. You’re right! You’re only damn well right! Good God Bill, I think you’ve only gone and struck gold again.”
“Happy to help Geoff. That’s what you pay me for in all the coke I can snort after all.”
And finally, an advert for a games machine called “Bust My Balloons” that doesn’t feature a half-naked, buxom woman on the front playfully squeezing balloons. How. On. Earth. Did. They. Make. A. Flyer. For. This. Game. Without. Featuring. A. Half. Naked. Buxom. Woman. Playfully. Squeezing. Balloons?
December 13, 2014
I’ve got some very fond memories of playing Defender of the Crown on my Commodore 64 but I don’t think I’d ever seen that advert for it and I’m pretty sure that’s the sort of thing I’d remember.