Old Food Ads Don't Get Much Creepier

OK, it's an ad for Swift and I can recognize the baked ham slice next to the too-green peas. But pray tell, what is the other food on the plate that has put this poor little girl into a trance? Raw chicken breast? Kidneys? I have absolutely no idea what food would have such strange hypnotic powers.
>>Brent

I'd guess they are canned or candied yams.

Yes I agree they are yams.

LMAO...that is one demonic look on the little girl's face.

=R=

ronnie_suburban wrote:LMAO...that is one demonic look on the little girl's face.

=R=

Could that be a young Natalie Wood? Really. It could be, right?

David Hammond wrote:

ronnie_suburban wrote:LMAO...that is one demonic look on the little girl's face.

=R=

Could that be a young Natalie Wood? Really. It could be, right?

You make the call.

http://www.childstarlets.com/lobby/bios ... _wood.html

My question is who the hell goes out to a restaurant for a slice of ham and a side of peas and yams?
You could make it yourself in the time it takes to get the kids dressed up and in the car.

zoid wrote:My question is who the hell goes out to a restaurant for a slice of ham and a side of peas and yams?
You could make it yourself in the time it takes to get the kids dressed up and in the car.

Yeah, and what's with wearing a hat at the dinner table? This is an outrage!

(PS. Natalie should have stuck to milk).

zoid wrote:My question is who the hell goes out to a restaurant for a slice of ham and a side of peas and yams?
You could make it yourself in the time it takes to get the kids dressed up and in the car.

LOL, such is the nature of advertising . . . to entice us to buy things that we didn't think we needed in the first place. As creepy as this ad is, it's nice to see that some things never change.

Also, fwiw, I thought those were foie gras lobes on the plate next to the peas and ham.

=R=

I've found a few more in this series of advertisements



I might argue this image is slightly creepier


She seems to be saying, "Soon..."

I'm trying to figure out what accounts for the appearance (to me, at least) that the food is somehow cut-and-pasted into the photo. It looks completely unreal, not just "styled." I'm looking particularly at the boy with the spaghetti. Both the food on the fork and in the dish look completely edited in. Is that because actual food styling was non-existent then? Am I just wrong about the pics?

They look like illustrations, not photographs, to me.

It looks to me like that boy is eating that spagetti in a very windy room. And I thought those were hot dogs on the table instead of breadsticks!

zoid wrote:My question is who the hell goes out to a restaurant for a slice of ham and a side of peas and yams?
You could make it yourself in the time it takes to get the kids dressed up and in the car.

Things used to be different. Chicago restaurateur Dario Toffenetti built a small empire based on "ham and sweets." His Triangle Restaurants in the Loop served their signature dish to millions of customers, many smartly dressed for a movie and a meal.

In 1929 Dario L Toffenetti wrote:The Highest Creation of Culinary Art: TRIANGLE Hot Roast Sugar Cured Ham and Sweets. Roasted ham, glittering with a crust of delectable sweetness and evaporated in an aroma well nigh overpowering to mortal senses. Oscar Mayer cured these hams and flavored them with the invigorating scent of hickory smoke. We roasted them by an exclusive process, bringing out the hidden wealth of tempting toothsomeness in every one. Combine a most liberal portion of this ham with real Southern sweet potatoes and fresh bread and butter. 65 cents.

The Triangle Restaurants morphed into the Toffenetti chain, which included locations in New York's Times Square and Chicago's Greyhound Terminal. For years—from Triangle to Toffenetti—their motto was "Famous for Ham and Sweets."

1950s Matchbook

Rene G wrote:

zoid wrote:My question is who the hell goes out to a restaurant for a slice of ham and a side of peas and yams?
You could make it yourself in the time it takes to get the kids dressed up and in the car.

Things used to be different. Chicago restaurateur Dario Toffenetti built a small empire based on "ham and sweets." His Triangle Restaurants in the Loop served their signature dish to millions of customers, many smartly dressed for a movie and a meal.

In 1929 Dario L Toffenetti wrote:The Highest Creation of Culinary Art: TRIANGLE Hot Roast Sugar Cured Ham and Sweets. Roasted ham, glittering with a crust of delectable sweetness and evaporated in an aroma well nigh overpowering to mortal senses. Oscar Mayer cured these hams and flavored them with the invigorating scent of hickory smoke. We roasted them by an exclusive process, bringing out the hidden wealth of tempting toothsomeness in every one. Combine a most liberal portion of this ham with real Southern sweet potatoes and fresh bread and butter. 65 cents.

The Triangle Restaurants morphed into the Toffenetti chain, which included locations in New York's Times Square and Chicago's Greyhound Terminal. For years—from Triangle to Toffenetti—their motto was "Famous for Ham and Sweets."

1950s Matchbook

That is awesome! What an incredible bit of prose . . . and thanks, for the history lesson. It's much appreciated.

=R=

David Hammond wrote:

zoid wrote:My question is who the hell goes out to a restaurant for a slice of ham and a side of peas and yams?
You could make it yourself in the time it takes to get the kids dressed up and in the car.

Yeah, and what's with wearing a hat at the dinner table? This is an outrage!
.

Ladies almost always used to wear hats when dressed up. Only gentlemen were required to remove their hats indoors. (It's actually still considered correct, but no one seems to know it anymore.)

http://www.villagehatshop.com/hat_etiquette.html

mrbarolo wrote: Is that because actual food styling was non-existent then? Am I just wrong about the pics?

Just the opposite. Food styling was always used. My guess is the food items were heavily retouched, probably more like re-illustrated. You are also seeing the visual technique of having a huge amount of image area with tack sharp focus. We don't do that much anymore these days. Current look is having things within a frame to be blurry and/or in focus and out of focus at the same time.

incite wrote:

She seems to be saying, "Soon..."

"White bread smeared generously with fresh gore...my favorite!"

Rene G wrote:

zoid wrote:My question is who the hell goes out to a restaurant for a slice of ham and a side of peas and yams?
You could make it yourself in the time it takes to get the kids dressed up and in the car.

Things used to be different. Chicago restaurateur Dario Toffenetti built a small empire based on "ham and sweets." His Triangle Restaurants in the Loop served their signature dish to millions of customers, many smartly dressed for a movie and a meal.

In 1929 Dario L Toffenetti wrote:The Highest Creation of Culinary Art: TRIANGLE Hot Roast Sugar Cured Ham and Sweets. Roasted ham, glittering with a crust of delectable sweetness and evaporated in an aroma well nigh overpowering to mortal senses. Oscar Mayer cured these hams and flavored them with the invigorating scent of hickory smoke. We roasted them by an exclusive process, bringing out the hidden wealth of tempting toothsomeness in every one. Combine a most liberal portion of this ham with real Southern sweet potatoes and fresh bread and butter. 65 cents.

The Triangle Restaurants morphed into the Toffenetti chain, which included locations in New York's Times Square and Chicago's Greyhound Terminal. For years—from Triangle to Toffenetti—their motto was "Famous for Ham and Sweets."

1950s Matchbook

Before my recent visit to Mike's Famous Ham Place in Corktown, Detroit, I would have agreed with Zoid. But Mike's offers a glimpse into a glorious American urban past when ham houses dished out proprietary pork preps worth the effort.

Satan Loves Jelly!

The spaghetti looks like worms. the little girl looks like the bad seed. Remember people ate much differently way back when. I remember going to Plentywood farms and they would serve a slice of baked ham, yams and some other item. Food was more basic then.

incite wrote:

The angle off the boy's fork might represent motion: it swings back because of the urgency of his forkful.

Do you think the bread was to represent an actual brand? It seems to be about cellophane more than anything. If so, then an ad for a product.

This sort of hyper-real is very out of fashion, and as noted above not the way we see things. I'd call it naive but I don't think that's what's going on. I think you're supposed to take in the details and take pleasure in them. These kind of awkward, homely kids are meant to be endearing, like a candid photo that leaves us with a demonic expression. It's photo-like that way.

I remember when cellophane bread wrappers were new; clear plastic bags weren't then ubiquitous. I remember on camping trips throwing them into the fire to watch the weird distortions.

The little girl appears to have her hopes up on obtaining that knife, no matter how dull it is. Can you hear her maniaical giggle???

*shudder*

Everybody knows that's not a proper stabbin' knife.

I think it's more like, mmm, now I'll know what daddy's brain tastes like!

This face looks familiar: http://www.perpetualkid.com/super-aweso ... cards.aspx

David Hammond wrote:This face looks familiar: http://www.perpetualkid.com/super-aweso ... cards.aspx

I know what he had for dinner!

David Hammond wrote:This face looks familiar: http://www.perpetualkid.com/super-aweso ... cards.aspx

I'd buy those cards just for the bacon card lol

I'm thinking the aforementioned wind in the room blew the boy's teeth out, and the girl is about to bite the hand that feeds her.