The strangest ads I've ever seen. 1 of 2

[write-light.livejournal.com]

Norton Company / Behr-Manning, 1951-52

"What doesn't belong in this picture?" they all ask, and then present a Salvador-Dali-would-be-proud surreal landscape of wildly disparate elements.  The answer in every case is bleak; what does not belong is whatever does not come from this company, or whatever has not been touched by man-made products.  Inevitably, it's the one completely natural thing in the picture that is "the stranger".




From the pages of Technology Review:






See the rest of this series of bizarre Norton ads at Vintage Ads Dreamwidth!

Comments

[tree_and_leaf]

Hang on, they're boasting about their products being used to manufacture V2 rockets? I know that the US used some of the V2 rockets they captured post war, but as far as I know they didn't make any more, because the technology moved on.

Surely they're not proud of having helped produce a weapon used against their allies by their enemy using slave labour?

[write-light.livejournal.com]

Post-war German-scientist Land is a strange land indeed.

[luke-russell.livejournal.com]

Beginning in September 1944, over 3,000 V-2s were launched as military rockets by the German Wehrmacht against Allied targets during the war, mostly London and later Antwerp. The attacks resulted in the death of an estimated 7,250 military personnel and civilians, while 12,000 forced laborers were killed producing the weapons. Thank you, Norton!

[eva]

I was wondering about that... I started to try to remember whether the Allies had something by that name, too, because I really couldn't believe they meant what they said.

[tree_and_leaf]

Yes, I couldn't believe it either, and went looking for another V2, but couldn't find anything. It may have been via a subsidiary, I suppose - like IBM's vital role (via its German and, later, its Polish subsidiary) in the administration of the Holocaust...

[privacycat.livejournal.com]

Whoa, dystopia central. These are some of the most unsettling pieces I've seen on this comm.

[write-light.livejournal.com]

Your Glorious Future will be man-made, mechanized, and sterile.

[murakozi.livejournal.com]

But you'll still get a pony!

[pikkewyntjie.livejournal.com]

The first one is incorrect. Wild horses that do not depend on man-made things. Domestic horses only need to be shod because of the extra stress of carrying or pulling things.

The artwork is kinda cool, but the ad concept isn't.

[eva]

Come now, you can't have horses running around freely! That would be even worse than uncontrolled ivy growth.

[luke-russell.livejournal.com]

Eeeeeuwww, ivy, birds, cobwebs and flies.

[luke-russell.livejournal.com]

If the ad agency's intent was to make us stop and stare at the picture, read the text and think, then they are a complete success.

[mjspice.livejournal.com]

What the??

[luke-russell.livejournal.com]

I'm finding the surrealism a little unsettling for some reason.....