A real match for the Axis

Found, if I recall, among bric-a-brac, in a job lot at an auction in the east of England, is this ‘striking’ packet of matches, only three of which have been used. As there are a number of US air bases in this part of the world, it may have once belonged to an airman who eventually settled here. Presumably, the date of manufacture by The Match Corporation of America in Chicago would be sometime between 1941 and 1945 and it is certainly possible that the US Air Force brought over to England large numbers of such packets for the use of their staff.

Advertising propaganda urging patriots to buy War Bonds dates back to the First World War, but I haven’t yet discovered any satirical British advertising on everyday objects, such as matches or cigarette packets, that dates from a hundred years ago . If any Jot 101 readers know of some, we would welcome further information. [RMH]

French bicycle poster - Durex 'en vente ici'

Found! Actually the gift of an American colleague and dealer in ephemera- this hanging wall card for cycle parts from the French company Durex. Probably from the early 1950s, the company appears to be now defunct.... This poster may amuse some Brits as Durex is the pre-eminent maker of condoms in Britain. Durex is practically synonymous with condoms there in the way Hoover is with vacuum cleaners.

In the USA it is Trojans which, although not unknown in Britain, is also the name of several different companies on the sceptered isle including an electronics company, an arms dealer ( Trojan Group) and a timber crating company.

The arms dealer Trojan sells assault rifles  with this quote from Voltaire: 'God is not on the side of the big battalions but  on the side of those who shoot best.' Exactement.

A Scottish Seal of Approval

Another Jot from the loyal RH, scholar, idler, gent and swordsman. The book mentioned is a signed book of mathematics (sort of) from 1775 and not in the British Library but obtainable online as we speak, signed by the author, for a paltry $50.

A Scottish Seal of Approval

Remember those Edwardian newspaper ads for Dr Collis Browne’s ‘Chlorodyne’—a patent medicine that purported to clear up cholera and diarrhoea, but which would certainly not cure the former, as it  contained mainly laudanum and tincture of cannabis, both of which, incidentally, would be banned today. Every bottle had Browne’s printed signature on it. Going a little further back, each label for Warren’s patent boot blacking bore the printed signature of its manufacturer, a fact to which  the teenage Charles Dickens, whose job in 1824 involved sticking these labels onto the pots, could attest . 

I cannot recall any grocery or pharmaceutical product that bore the manufacturer’s signature before the days of Warren, but I might be wrong. Robert Warren was a marketing pioneer (as John Strachan’s excellent study, Advertising and Satirical Culture in the Romantic Period, discusses at some length). But look in vain in Strachan for books of the Romantic period that bore the author’s printed signature. As for a handwritten signature, I’ve come across none whatsoever. You have to go back  to the Age of Johnson to find just one example. The second edition of Tables of Interest at 4, 4 1/2 and 5 per cent, which Cadell and Murray bought out in 1775 warns the buyer on page two not to accept  any book bearing Mr Thomson’s name on the title page that does not also feature his actual signature. So there it is, written in ink, at the bottom of page two. Amazing !

The reason for all this wariness must have something to do with the frequent acts of book piracy that prevailed before the Copyright Act was passed in 1842. It would seem that the first edition of Mr Thomson’s book had been a victim of piracy soon after it had appeared in Edinburgh in 1768.Book piracy in the 1760s seems to have been particularly prevalent. My own edition of Pope’s Works, which came out a year earlier, was a pirated edition by A. Donaldson, a notorious offender from Scotland, who may have been the culprit in the case of Thomson’s Tables.

Boon Haw's Tiger Balm Car

Aw Boon Haw was the founder of the Tiger Balm fortunes.  His splendid sports car is shown in Carveth Wells 1940 book North of Singapore. 75 years later it is on display in the Tiger Balm mansion Haw Par Villa in Singapore. Aw Boon Haw used to drive the car (a customised Humber) around Singapore, a tiger head on the radiator, fangs protruding, wire whiskers. Red bulbs were in the eyes, and the horn sounded like a tiger’s roar. Great publicity - way before Shell's  "tiger in your tank."

There is a story of a road rivalry between Boon Haw and Sultan Ibrahim of Johore. Sultan Ibrahim was a sportsman and hunter. The incident took place when the Sultan, enraged at being overtaken by Boon Haw in his famous Tiger Car. Sultan Ibrahim shot at the Tiger Car on Bukit Timah Road. It was considered lese-majesté to overtake royalty even on foreign roads*. Notwithstanding, the British colonial administration forbade the Sultan thereafter from visiting Singapore ever again except for purpose of going to and from the Singapore airport.


* This tradition of royal road rage still persists among plutocrats - for example Aristotle Onassis's biographer notes that he detested anyone who overtook his Porsche...

An enigma inside a maze

Found this ad in a pulp magazine Clues - A Magazine of Detective Stories from November 10 1930. The advertiser pleads:

Help! Who can get me out?  I'll pay $8000. Come to my rescue – quick. I'm HOPELESSLY lost in these treacherous, trackless catacombs. 

I've tried for hours  to find the right path to freedom but here I am right back in the middle again. Can you find the right path? Will you try? 1000 thanks! – I knew you would. But first let me warn you there is only one path to freedom and it's oh so hard to find... Mark it plainly with pen or pencil and send it to me fast. If correct, I'll see that you are qualified at once for an opportunity to win as much as $2320 cash out of the $8000 in rewards that I'm going to give away. It's all free...

Is this an eccentric millionaire, or a wily entrepreneur garnering the addresses of mug punters, or a publicity stunt?

The clue is the word 'qualified'. Surely this is a forerunner of the Nigerian scams? The maze is probably not that difficult-- you send in your solution and soon hear that you have qualified to win a big prize and must send in, say, $10 (a useful sum in 1930) to enter for the big prize. After that you never hear from him again or are asked for further sums for even bigger prizes. Chap was based in Chicago.

The Finer Points of Advertising

Found in a privately published book on advertising From One Person To Another. What advertising is all about and how you go about it. By John E O’Toole. (FCB, London & NY 1977 -'Intended solely for the use of FCB people in their work for FCB clients'). A good summary of basic laws from the splendidly named Fairfax Mastick Cone, an advertising wunderkind from the days of Mad Men and before…


 EXECUTION: SOME FINER POINTS.

Fairfax Cone has said only one thing, to my knowledge, that is patently untrue. It is in this brief piece he wrote years ago, something many of us keep in our offices and try to keep in our minds. I include the piece here, not only to see if you can spot the untruth, but because it can serve as a summary of this entire book for those in a hurry.

"It is the primary requirement of advertising to be clear, clear to what exactly the proposition is.

If it isn’t clear, and clear at a glance or a whisper, very few people will take the time or the effort to try to figure it out.

The second essential of advertising is that what must be clear must also be important. The proposition must have value.

Third, the proposition (the promise) that is both clear and important must also have a personal appeal. It should be beamed at its logical prospects; no one else matters.

Fourth, the distinction in good advertising expresses the personality of the advertiser; for a promise is only as good as its maker.

Finally, a a good advertisement demands action. It asks for an order , or exacts a mental pledge.

Altogether these things define a desirable advertisement as one that will command attention but never be offensive.

It will be reasonable, but never dull.

It will be original, but never self-conscious.

It will be imaginative, but never misleading.

And because of what it is, and what it is not, a properly prepared advertisement will always be convincing and make people act.

This, incidentally is all I know about advertising.”

The falsehood, of course is the last sentence. He knows immensely more about advertising than that.

He simply didn’t want amateurs involving themselves in the fine points before mastering the basic skills of the craft. That admonition pertains as we launch into the few aspects of execution that are, perhaps, more entertaining to discuss than the fundamental considerations they follow, but are worthless without them.

Proficiency in the fine points depends heavily on a life-long love and respect for one’s language, a fair design instinct, a reasonable ear for music and a sense of what is appropriate.
It depends equally on learning through trial and error. Discussing work each day with Fax Cone, as a fortunate few of us did for many years, resulted in numerous trials and resulted in abundant errors., but the knowledge gleaned from those conversations is today beyond price.

Halitosis - a firing offence (1940)

Vintage ad for Listerine on the inside of a mystery fiction magazine from 1940, the end of the era of the 'shudder-pulps.' Ads in these mags often relied on shaming the reader - acne, bad breath, weedy body (the guy who gets sand kicked in his face.) The rare pulp 'Red Star Mystery' was the first ever of that title, it lasted about a year. Don Diavolo (The Scarlet Wizard) seen on the cover  was the inspiration for Rawson's famous hero, the Great Merlini. Did the phrase 'Sorry Watkins but we're cutting down' have some currency in the 1940s? Listerine suggests all firms have their employees use it once a day 'maybe a few super- employees can get away with it, but lesser ones shouldn't even try...'