What This (And Every) Blog Needs: More Campbell's Soup

1959

If there's anything I like more than morbidly obese animated children extolling the virtues of My Canned Childhood (we ate a lot of Campbell's in my house growing up), it's using wink-wink nudge-nudge stereotypes about Scottish people to sell soup. "It's thrifty, too...aye, you can add seven or eight cans of water to that soup to make it stretch farther!"

Have you had your soup today?

From 1959: Better Living Through Gimmicks!

Another gorgeous housewife finding the ultimate in personal fulfillment from her pink washer and dryer. As "new as today's fabrics," housewives in 1959 could rest assured that five cycles of Filter-Flo power were making whites their whitest and brights their brightest!

Gorgeous double-clicker.

From 1959: When Huge Jugs And Perception-Bending Drugs Collide In The Mind Of The Man In The Grey Flannel Suit

What a piece of work this gem is!

Not only will Good Old Harvey no longer "lie there and mope," he will live to see another day to be his usual lecherous and unpleasant self...thanks to the magic of the wizards at Smith, Kline, and French!

Indeed, a "bright side" for your patients...and the hardworking nurses who just love to be ogled by them!

Dexamyl featured a mixture of dextroamphetamine and amobarbital in an extended release capsule (the "Spansule"). This highly addictive drug was very popular on the street, where it was sold under the name of "Christmas Trees," so named for their bright green capsules and pearly white granules visible within.

Dexamyl was taken off the market on June 30, 1973.

Another Tale Of Two Covers

"Whiz Kid" Van Doren is lauded on the cover of Time in 1957 for having defeated champion Herb Stempel and subsequently going on to reign as champion himself on NBC's Twenty One. Van Doren won $129,000 as a contestant on the show. Not a bad amount of scratch by today's standards; imagine how much it was back in 1957!

Charles Van Doren in late 1959, as he prepared to testify before the House Subcommittee on Legislative Oversight, about how Twenty One and other such television "quiz" shows were rigged, and that he, Van Doren, was given the answers to the questions in advance by the show's producers.


You can watch the actual broadcast where Van Doren defeated Stemple!

C'est un monde se balançant, le bébé!

Probably 1959

It's difficult to find a date for this album, but it is undoubtedly the soundtrack for his Broadway show of the same name.