No Hangovers in 2014!

Well it's time to flip the calendar again as 2014 is nearly upon us. For my final post of the year, I'm harking back to 1978, the year my family came back to the U.S. and in my opinion, the best year ever next to 1982 (Joust, Q*Bert and Ms.Pac-Man) and maybe 1987 (Star Trek: The Next Generation). The following print ad touting Alka-Selzter's hangover-fighting abilities is from a time when people were much more open about inebriation and intoxication. The children of the 60s had grown up, they were now in power and were continuing to pursue their dreams of, as Austin Powers put it, "having unprotected sex with many anonymous partners, while experimenting with mind expanding drugs in a consequence free environment." Of course then Nancy Reagan and Mr. T came along in the 80s and shut the whole damned party down. So enjoy this little nugget from a simpler time and perhaps you too can avoid the dreaded New Year's Day hangover.

Vintage Ad Browser

Most American geeks are, by nature, consumer-oriented, which is no real surprise as this is the kind of society we live in. Consequently, many geeks, myself included, end-up working in marketing or advertising. Personally, I've always loved ads of all kinds and the alternate reality they provoke within my flaky mind. In the world of advertising, everyone is rich, happy, sexy and has nothing better to do than worry about than their own comfort and security and the comfort and security of those around them. Now if that isn't the American dream I don't know what is. So imagine my excitement when I discovered a website that hosts tens of thousands of vintage print ads and makes them available for general perusal, some dating all the way back to the 1800s!

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE VINTAGE AD BROWSER AND KILL SOME TIME WHEN YOU SHOULD BE WORKING

Pet Rock: Now With USB

One of the best and possibly the shortest fads of the 1970s was known as streaking the Pet Rock, which lasted for about 6 months. For those of you too young to remember, the Pet Rock was Californian entrepreneur and advertising guru Gary Dahl's answer for people who wanted to care for a subordinate companion but didn't want to bother with feeding it, cleaning up after it, etc.  The "pet" would arrive in a brown cardboard box complete with holes for air, some straw for bedding and a comical 32-page care manual that was replete with puns and jokes and even contained a section dedicated to training your Pet Rock (while the manual stated that tricks like "come here" and "shake hands" were nigh impossible to coax out of a rock, the command "attack" was  noted as being fairly simple to achieve, albeit requiring some assistance from the pet's owner). After the Christmas shopping season of 1975 helped push some 1.5 million units into the shag-carpeted homes of America (making Gary a millionaire in the process) the product experienced a quick decline in sales and was discontinued just a few months later. Gary went on to become a success in the advertising industry and eventually authored Advertising for Dummies in 2001.

If you're feeling especially groovy and have the urge to own a low-maintenance pet, that even your apartment manager won't mind, you can still get one of these amazing "creatures" today including all of the classic packaging accessories. Of course here in the 21st century we do things a little differently so the product has now been upgraded to include USB (I would have added Bluetooth, everything is better with Bluetooth).

CLICK HERE TO PICK UP A USB PET ROCK AT THINKGEEK FOR CHEAP