From Poodles To Presley
Americans Enter The Atomic Age. Exerpt from the book 'All-American Ads of the 50s' by Jim Heimann
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As the decade progressed, the extremes of car design were taken to their limits. Fins got larger, chrome embellished almost every surface and the size of the cars expanded to near-impossible lengths. The advertising which accompanied these behemoths bordered on pretension. The doomed Ford Edsel claimed "They'll know you've arrived when you drive up in an Edsel." The Buick Limited was "The car conceived and created to change your ideas of luxury motoring." The ad copy for the Pontiac declared "A bold new car for a bold new generation." The trend in massive cars would last into the early 1960s when smaller compact imports including the Volkswagen, an odd little German car which appeared at the end of the decade, would profoundly change the future of American car buying. Until then, America basked in an era unmatched in automobile production.
Serious consumption was joined by whimsical buying in a move that seemed to counter the harsh realities of nuclear annihilation. Americans wholeheartedly embraced a whole range of fads in the 1950s buying unnecessary objects out of sheer compulsion. Coonskin caps, chlorophyll-infused products, Capri pants, bongos, shrunken heads, hula hoops, flying saucers, Tupperware, and purple people eaters were bought with abandon. For one short period in the mid 1950s anything that was pink was in. Pink refrigerators, pink stoves, pink lipstick, pink dress shirts and pink typewriters. Ads for GE's pink light bulbs boasted that they would flatter complexions and furnishings. Copy for Royal portable typewriters gushed that finally you had choice in the color of your typewriter. The Russian threat would just have to wait until Americans could stock up on pink toilet paper.
In the 1950s, the public was badgered to consume, and no one wanted to be old fashioned. Replacing the old with the new was considered a good thing. Advertisements reinforced the idea that to be modern was to be hip. In design and architecture, modern usually meant European Modernism. But modern also came to mean that objects were manufactured, not hand made, and most had a planned obsolescence built in. The American public trusted that industry had their best interests in mind and that they were being led to a better future by accepting everything modern. As long as things looked newer, exciting and better, consumption rolled swiftly along.
Page 1 2 3 4 5
Page 1 2 3 4 5
As the decade progressed, the extremes of car design were taken to their limits. Fins got larger, chrome embellished almost every surface and the size of the cars expanded to near-impossible lengths. The advertising which accompanied these behemoths bordered on pretension. The doomed Ford Edsel claimed "They'll know you've arrived when you drive up in an Edsel." The Buick Limited was "The car conceived and created to change your ideas of luxury motoring." The ad copy for the Pontiac declared "A bold new car for a bold new generation." The trend in massive cars would last into the early 1960s when smaller compact imports including the Volkswagen, an odd little German car which appeared at the end of the decade, would profoundly change the future of American car buying. Until then, America basked in an era unmatched in automobile production.
Serious consumption was joined by whimsical buying in a move that seemed to counter the harsh realities of nuclear annihilation. Americans wholeheartedly embraced a whole range of fads in the 1950s buying unnecessary objects out of sheer compulsion. Coonskin caps, chlorophyll-infused products, Capri pants, bongos, shrunken heads, hula hoops, flying saucers, Tupperware, and purple people eaters were bought with abandon. For one short period in the mid 1950s anything that was pink was in. Pink refrigerators, pink stoves, pink lipstick, pink dress shirts and pink typewriters. Ads for GE's pink light bulbs boasted that they would flatter complexions and furnishings. Copy for Royal portable typewriters gushed that finally you had choice in the color of your typewriter. The Russian threat would just have to wait until Americans could stock up on pink toilet paper.
In the 1950s, the public was badgered to consume, and no one wanted to be old fashioned. Replacing the old with the new was considered a good thing. Advertisements reinforced the idea that to be modern was to be hip. In design and architecture, modern usually meant European Modernism. But modern also came to mean that objects were manufactured, not hand made, and most had a planned obsolescence built in. The American public trusted that industry had their best interests in mind and that they were being led to a better future by accepting everything modern. As long as things looked newer, exciting and better, consumption rolled swiftly along.
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