The Men Who Plan Beyond Tomorrow!
I saw this on Power Line Blog and found it worthwhile to reprint.
It is a series of magazine ads, from Seagram’s VO Canadian whiskey, which they used in their advertising.
Most of them were pretty amazingly accurate, even for World War II era. Almost 1984-esque.
But less Orwellian.
Back in the mid-1940s, Seagram’s advertised its VO Canadian whiskey with a series of extremely manly magazine ads about “Men Who Plan Beyond Tomorrow”–unspecified futuristic thinkers who liked the fact that Seagram’s was patient enough to age VO for six years. No, it doesn’t make much sense to me, either. But the ads, each of which depicted a different miracle that would transform postwar America, are glorious. They’re entertaining when they sort-of-accurately predict scenarios that eventually came to be, such as the rise of the cell phone. And they’re even more so when they marvel at wonders-to-be such as coin-operated streetcorner fax machines. Herewith, some highlights as they appeared in LIFE magazine–click the dates to see the issues with the ads at Google Books.
Like Sports Bars, or Farms in the Desert… or *shudder* Cell Phones.
It is pretty entertaining, especially when you realizing you are looking back, not forward.
Jeremy, I thought of you when I read this article. I’d like to hear your first impressions:
http://justgetthere.us/blog/archives/Our-World-May-Be-A-Giant-Hologram.html
Comment by Jeff Phillips — February 5, 2010 @ 10:28:06 PM