Here’s a commercial for Bavaria Radler beer where it shows the likes of Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur, John Lennon, Bruce Lee, Marilyn Monroe and Elvis chilling on a tropical island drinking some cold brewskies.

I’m sure Mr. Cobain—who famously feared being a sell-out—would have just loved this concept. Doubtful that it’ll cause Yoko Ono to yuck it up much either. I smell a lawsuit!

“Jupiter” and “L’Amoureux”
 
In 1967 the Linweave Paper Co. was looking to promote its outstanding paper products, so they hit on a terrific promotional idea—publish a large-format, full-color tarot deck with art in the contemporary style executed by several top graphic artists of the moment. So they hired Ron Rae, Hy Roth, Nicolas Sidjakov, and David Mario Palladini to do it, and the results was a lively whimsical deck that looks like it came straight out of Yellow Submarine. Unfortunately, the Linweave Paper Co. apparently closed up shop in 1989. So today, that means that the tarot deck is the thing it’s more known for. A collector’s item, it now goes for about $100 used on Amazon.

The actual title of the deck is “Linweave Spells Your Fortune with a Modern Interpretation of the Medieval Tarot Pack: Presented on the Most Exciting Creative Papers in America”—just that alone is pretty awesome. I’ve selected a choice few for presentation here; you can see many more cards at these friendly websites.
 

Linweave Tarot, cover
 

 

“Le Mai”
 
More after the jump…

 
I have always thought there was something likable about Paul Hogan and his seemingly unassuming, rough, good-natured charm. It was what made Crocodile Dundee such an international hit, and even tempted travelers to visit Down Under with the promise of “another shrimp on the barbie.”

With Crocodile Dundee it was always difficult to know where Hogan finished and the fictional character began. They seemed one-and-the same—even if there was a sneaking suspicion that for anyone to be this nice in the world of entertainment he must be a bit of a bastard.

Crocodile Dundee was a phenomenal success by any standards, but especially for a first film.

“Everything was a first. It was my first film script. I’d written 500 sketches but this was a long sketch.

“John (Cornell) had never produced a movie. Peter Faiman was the boy wonder of television but he’d never directed a movie. Everyone in it except the technical crew were first-timers.

“It went through the roof. It became the most successful independent movie ever made around the world. It was like going to the Olympics and rolling your jeans up and saying, ‘Can I have a run in the 100?’ and winning the gold medal.”

Paul Hogan’s comedy career started when he was a rigger and painter on the Sydney Harbor Bridge. His break came doing stand-up on the TV talent show New Faces, which eventually led to his own hit comedy series in 1973.

Like many other actors and actresses, Hogan did a brief spell selling cigarettes to his fellow Australians in the 1970s. His ads for Winfields made the brand a best-seller, and his tag-line, “Anyhow, have a Winfield…” became a national catchphrase.
 

 
It is something Hogan now regrets, and he considers “encouraging people to smoke,” as akin to being a “drug dealer.”

“At the time, 1971 or something, they used to say: ‘Doctors recommend …’ or ‘Nine out of 10 smokers prefer…’ We were all being conned. When they put the medical warning in there I said, ‘I’m going to get out of this.’

“Young ones were taking up smoking and all going for Winfield. It was a staggering success but I was a drug dealer.

“But who knew then?”

There it is again, that disarming charm.
 

 
In this marvelous 19-minute educational film about the dangers of carelessly handled foodstuffs, “Basil and Desdemonia Salmonella,” ably and theatrically embodied by seasoned British actors Frank Muir and June Whitfield, manage to (SPOILER ALERT) evade a battery of dangers, such as heat, cold, soap, and so on to start a gargantuan, toxic family in the belly of some unsuspecting Briton.

Throughout, Basil explains the dangers that lie ahead while offering reassurances that the stupid humans will likely neglect to wash their knives properly, re-heat their repasts at a sufficiently low temperature, and so on. These dialogues, set in a suitably sci-fi and low-budget soundstage, are intercut with more traditional scenes of the aforementioned stupid humans committing the very transgressions that assure the microbes’ survival. Stupid humans!! We see a well-meaning butcher and, later, a somewhat quarrelsome married couple preparing a meal.

Basil, who carries around a pipe all the time, and Desdemonia both wear the silver signifiers of 1970s’ sci-fi, the type of garb that incidentally was lovingly lampooned in “App Development and Condiments,” the most recent episode of Community.
 

 
Muir was the type of older British actor (he was also a writer) who in an alternate universe might have played Alfred to Adam West’s Batman; he’s awfully familiar to me but I’ll be damned if I recognize anything in his CV. Whitfield has had a more illustrious career—she’s still active at the age of 88—and might be best known for her portrayal of “Mother” in Ab Fab and even appeared in one of those cringeworthy Friends episodes where the whole gang flew to London for a wedding or something. Interestingly, “A Tale of Two Microbes” has more than a whiff of the old Doctor Who episodes about them, so it’s fitting that she popped up in the two-part episode “The End of Time” just a few years ago.

“A Tale of Two Microbes” is dated as all hell and irredeemably British, campy and enjoyable. Just when things start to lag, Basil’s “Uncle Pedro” shows up. Trust me: you don’t want to miss Uncle Pedro.
 

 
via Weird Universe

 
Of all the Venn diagrams in the world, I suspect I can forgo the one showing Hello Kitty/Playboy demographic overlap. I’m guessing it would consist mainly of creepy guys as well as cooler women who don’t give a damn what people think of them. I’m OK with the second group…...

French retailer Colette recently announced a new line of products mashing up two of the most recognizable (if oddly matched) brands on earth.

Here’s RocketNews24’s report:

French clothing and accessories retailer Colette is introducing a line of Hello Kitty x Playboy items, including candy, mirrors, memo notes, lighters, mugs, Leica cameras, iPhone cases, socks, bowties, boxers, shirts, and more. Naturally, the items sport one of two perfect logo mashups—Kitty wearing bunny ears, and the Playboy bunny with a bow on one ear.

The collaboration was celebrated last Friday at Paris’ Crazy Horse cabaret, with Hello Kitty designer Yuko Yamaguchi in attendance, who said the new design was “really sexy cool.” Also in attendance was Colette creative director and purchasing manager Sarah Andelman, who spear-headed the campaign.

Although the club typically includes a variety of topless acts, all of that night’s entertainment was PG. After all, it’s still Hello Kitty.

 
That the event was held at a strip club that had to be made “PG” for the evening might have been a warning sign that went unheeded.

Having said that, if you want to wear a $274 Hello Kitty/Playboy-branded bowtie, I’m not going to judge you for it. (Well, I probably will judge you for it, but here’s to hoping you have other fine qualities.) And actually, context is everything, if you’re a super cool hipster librarian lady, you really can buy and display any and all of these products, go for it!
 

Portable speaker, €40 ($54.94)
 

iPhone case 5/5S, €25 ($34.34)
 

Bowtie, €200 ($274.72)
 

Lighter, €5 ($6.87)
 

Lollipops, €5 ($6.87)
 

Temporary tattoos, €6 ($8.24)
 

Bonbons, €1 ($1.37)
 

Coffee mug, €12 ($16.48)
 

Dice game, €10 ($13.74)
 

Multicolored ballpoint pens, €4 ($5.49)
 
via RocketNews24

 
Ken Nordine’s 1966 album Colors is the perfect marriage of the beat poetic impulse and good ol’ regular American advertising. Ken Nordine was asked to produce a series of radio spots for the Fuller Paint Company, and how the heck do you promote color on the radio anyway? Nordine did 10 commercials, each playfully extolling one of the colors in the spectrum—actually it was 9 colors and an additional one for the spectrum—and, much to everyone’s surprise, people called in and asked to hear the commercials again. So an album was cut, this time with 34 colorful poems set to music.

These delightfully square light-jazz classics will instantly turn any six-year-old into a finger-snapping hepcat. If you’re putting together an mp3 mix for a party, throw in a few of these Nordine classics, they’re short and everyone will notice them.

True to the bebop impulse, according to Nordine, the music was pretty much improv’d on the spot:
 

A fellow by the name of Bob Pritkin, a very strange and talented man, worked at an advertising agency, called me up and wanted me to do the Fuller Paint commercials. The assignment was to take nine colors, and then one would be all colors—spectrum. From that I wrote the ten commercials, starting with “The Fuller Paint Company invites you to stare with your ears at yellow,” and then we would do yellow or blue or green. What I did was I wrote this out, and then I got a group of musicians together to depict—free form—as we were recording it. For example, “The Fuller Paint Company invites you to stare with your ears at yellow”: “In the beginning” (whatever the musicians thought “in the beginning” sounded like) “or long before that”—and it would continue as light was deciding who was going to be in or out of the spectrum—“yellow was in serious trouble.” Well, that was one. We also did another one which was a yellow canary, or a yellow lemon drop, or y’ello, can you hear me?—a lot of light-hearted things. At any rate, I wrote the ten commercials and was very pleased. They were only on the air for thirteen weeks, and then they went off. People would call up and say, “Hey—play that again,” and they couldn’t, because they were commercials. And so, they caused quite a stir. They won an International Broadcast Award, which was wonderful, you know—something to dust. Very strange to win this big award, and that was the end of it. I thought, “God, how ephemeral. That was so much fun, doing that, and now it isn’t going to be heard anymore.” So I added about thirteen more colors—we did forty-four, all told—and I went back to Universal Recording in Chicago, and did the whole series of the colors, taking out the name of the Fuller Paint Company and just doing the colors as you hear them on the record. Yellow is different, but the rest are pretty much the same as they were.

 

 
Here’s a sample lyric, from the album’s opener “Olive”:
 

Olive, poor thing
Sits and thinks
That it’s drab
Sure does

Sits and sits and sits and sits and thinks
About it’s olive drab drab
Doesn’t know that it is about to be named
Color of the year
By those with the nose for the new
By the passionate few

Yeah
Olive is definitely in
Everything that can possibly mean anything
Anywhere
At least for a year
Has got to be olive
Did you hear that, olive? Did ya?
Know what it means?

Oh, olive
There’ll be olive cars
and olive trucks
and olive chickens
and olive ducks
and olive socks
and olive garters
and olive breaks
and olive starters

Olive sorry
Olive please
Olive whatnots
and olive trees
Olive trees?
What a quaint notion
Olive trees

Here are the first five tracks of the album—if you want to listen to all 34 of them (almost all of them are in the 1:34 area in terms of length), then you can go here, I’m not going to clog up this page with 34 embeds.
 
“Olive”

 
“Lavender”

 
“Burgundy”

 
“Yellow”

 
“Green”

 
Here’s a cute kinetic type animation inspired by “Green”:
 

 
DM pal Red Scharlach has been described as “the best purveyor of graphic crack out there.” It’s a fair description, as the talented Ms. Scharlach produces a delightful variety of daily material that is entertaining, clever, often thought-provoking and wee a bit obsessed with Benedict Cumberbatch... but in a nice way.

Today Scharlach has created an amusing response to an offensive advertisement from the supposedly liberated “Swinging Sixties.” Ahem.

Above, you see a genuine ad from Popular Science (1968), courtesy of newhousebooks. Below is the image that popped into my mind when I first saw it.

Perhaps there IS an upside to sexist retro advertising after all?

See more of Red Scharlach’s work here.
 

 
Previously on Dangerous MInds
Otters who look like Benedict Cumberbatch
 

 
It’s a 1974 TV commercial for David Live and it’s pretty goofy. It’s but 30 seconds long, so there’s not a lot more to say about it other than it’s pretty goofy.
 

 
Okay then…

Here’s a better one from earlier that same year, for Diamond Dogs. The sultry voice-over here is by Cherry Vanilla, Bowie’s then publicist at his MainMan Ltd. management company. She probably produced it, too, as she came from a Mad Men-era Madison Avenue advertising background before Andy Warhol beckoned.
 

 
In the late ‘60s, The Electric Prunes were riding pretty high. Their 1966 single “I Had Too Much To Dream (Last Night)” sold well and is still considered a classic, and their 1967 self-titled debut LP was a hit, establishing them in the public consciousness as well as in the garage-psych scene. Their tremoloed, fuzzed-out guitar attack made them as much a badge for the style as their weird name did, so it was probably a totally natural call to select them to record this amazing radio ad for the newly introduced Vox Wah-Wah pedal.
 

 
Cracks me up every time. That was made available on the second Pebbles
compilation in 1979, and later again as a hidden track on the Too Much To Dream double CD set.

I so wish the companies making guitar effects today would do such ads. I appreciate that YouTube videos are much more demonstratively effective and less expensive to make and distribute, but I’d love to hear some jobber announcer awkwardly—but breathlessly!—extolling the virtues of some of the truly weird shit that’s out there now in effects-land. Imagine an ad like that for the Rainbow Machine. The Superego. The Possessed!

The Prunes would break up under the ministrations of manager Lenny Poncher and composer David Axelrod, who, foreshadowing some of the nobody-needed-you-to-be-this-ambitious moves of ‘70s prog (lookin’ at you, ELP), tried to get the band to record an actual Catholic Mass (previously). The album, Mass in F Minor, did come out, and is regarded as a minor weirdo classic of sorts, but the band began shedding members during the recording—most accounts have it that they ALL bailed—and much of that album and all that would follow it were recorded by studio musicians under the Prunes’ name. Here’s the real deal, in a seldom seen TV appearance, performing the songs “You Never Had it Better” and yes, “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night),” looking high as fuck. (Or maybe they just had too much to advertise the night before?)
 

 
NYC-based British illustrator Jon Burgerman has blogged a darkly hilarious series of digitally altered photos titled “Head Shots,” which depict him being murdered by movie and TV posters in the NYC Subway system, in an effort to call attention to the pervasiveness of violence in culture and entertainment. Via The Fox Is Black:

Jon describes the work as “interventions staged in public” and each image features a violent advertisement found in the New York subway. I’m particularly impressed by how simple and effective these images are at highlighting the violence that exists in ads. Most of us pass these types of images everyday and yet we never stop to notice just how violent they can be.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
More after the jump…