I’m frustrated. I can tell you this because I know we’re close and I know you won’t tell anyone. I just wrote a big thing about EVs that my partners want to hold until tomorrow because we already have so much EV content but I’m a petulant child and just want to publish stuff now now now and then never look back, and look to the next story and on and on forever! Oh well. I’ll just move on to something genuinely relevant and important, like this peculiar 71 year old cartoon magazine ad for a gas station. This old ad is incredible because if you’re just flipping pages, it actually can make you do a double-take and flip back to it, just to see what the hell is going on there. Which is really the ultimate achievement for a magazine ad, is it not? Let’s look at this crazy thing.
Here’s the ad in question, scanned from a November 1952 issue of Motor Trend:
Okay! Let’s just do a quick survey of the land here, and see what we’re dealing with: we have a car that looks like some composite of a few early 1910s cars, a radiator shaped a bit like a White and a body that resembles a Ford Model T coupé. The car has a well-laden roof rack, what appear to be curtains inside, and is occupied by a pair of middle-aged women wearing identical and very prim and proper clothing, including lace collars, spectacles, and a hat adorned with chains of flowers.
They also appear to be identical twins.
There’s also what seems to be a large dead moose lashed to the running board and fenders of the car, and the expression on the moose’s face is one that suggests that he has finally found true peace in the cold embrace of death:
Look at that face: the closed eyes, the satisfied smile, the relaxed demeanor – I’ve never seen another moose make looking being shot and killed by a couple of dowagers look so appealing.
Then, of course, there is what is arguably the focal point of the ad, the Mobilgas attendant, dapper in his crisp uniform, under a trio of trustworthy diamonds proclaiming CLEAN REST ROOMS, and, yes, pointing a rifle right at his face. That’s the detail that made me do a double-take the first time, because, well, at a glance it looks like the dude is about to blow his brains out.
Closer inspection suggests that he seems to be cleaning the rifle, as there is a rag in his other hand, and while I don’t pretend to be a firearms expert, I’m going to go out on a limb and say if you’re cleaning a gun, maybe don’t point it right at your eye? I don’t think he has a finger on the trigger, but I also am not 100% sure of that, either. Point is, these two old ladies trundled into a gas station with, what, 1,200 pounds of dead moose meat strapped to their car and now there’s a guy pointing a gun at his face.
I’m assuming this is all just related to the “extra friendly service” tagline, though the copy uses checking on your battery as opposed to cleaning your gun. Did this sort of thing actually happen? Would gas station attendants clean whatever firearms you happened to bring with you when you got gas? Would a company like Mobil want to encourage that?
Maybe these two women have hypnotized this poor bastard! They seem to look quite pleased with themselves as he dangerously handles that gun. Are they doing this with their mind, for sport? Is this how they landed that massive, beatific-looking moose? Are they dangerous? Should we be worried?
Is this a good ad? I can’t even tell anymore. If we interpret this picture in the most straightforward manner possible, the narrative is that a set of identical twin women took a hunting trip, killed a moose, and then stopped for gas on the way back, whereupon the gas station attendant cleaned their rifle. Okay. I guess that says something about service?
How would people react to this today? If this was done in a less cartoony and more modern manner? You know what? This is an ideal application for AI image generation!
I used the following description of the ad to produce these images:
old identical twin women go to gas station in a car with a dead moose strapped to it while the gas station attendant cleans a rifle by pointing it at his face
…and here were the results:
Huh. Look at that. The top one has a car that feels like a ’60s Mopar ute sort of thing at the bottom, and a more modern minivan up top. I see the old ladies, hunting, and a moose, and also a sort of moose-human hybrid being in there. Also that moose seems to have a segmented body, like an ant.
The lower pair of images grant antlers to some of the women, a bold choice, and I like the upper car; it reminds me a bit of a Renault Dauphine. The lower car has a sort of roof-mounted rifle, I think, and what may be a lot of blood on the side. Let’s take another stab at this, but this time with an even more photographic approach:
Well, I’m not sure these help, but they do seem less violent; in the top one, that moose seems more like a sweet pet, some kind of specially-bred lap moose, and in the second one, in that painfully-confusing car the moose doesn’t look dead at all. Would any of these work for a modern ad campaign for a gas station? Maybe, right? I mean, I’d probably still do a double-take, just like I did for their inspiration, made seven decades ago.
I think the takeaway here is pretty clear: don’t point a rifle at your face, dummy.
A search for “mobilgas extra friendly service” turns up a number of weird ads from this campaign, ranging from the merely quirky (a service attendant carrying a small boy to the “gents” room on a cushion) to the really strange and specific (attendant polishing the optics on some kind of jalopy-mounted telescope offering 10-cent views of the moon and Venus).
The quality of weed in the early 50’s was either very good or very poor (Can’t figure out which), at least in the art department of Mobiles ad firm.
I like that the AI uses birch trees in the background, very apt for Scandinavian moose hunting. In general, I think AI has not drawn enough moose yet and they seem to have omitted the gas station attendant entirely.
Those AI images are just a boatload of harmless little internet fun… oh wait, what the grand funk did I just look at?!??! I’m scarred! Scarred for life now!
My brain hurts…
Too much to assume the moose is dead. He’s just tied to the car because there’s no room for him in the cabin, and he’s sleeping – pining’ for the fjords, maybe. There, see, he moved!
Based on the publication date, the attendant is probably a WWII veteran and recognizes the importance of weapon maintenance. He’s using his expert skills to provide additional services above and beyond, but is a bit rusty and has forgotten certain basic safety protocols.
The women remind me of the Baldwin sisters from The Waltons.
Looking down the barrel of a gun is not “forgetting a safety protocol.” Such expert, yes.
You’ve worked hard for a year now.
Blog is doing fine.
Maybe time for a vacay?
Restore your sanity?
No, please no!
Embrace the brilliance that comes from crazy.
That second AI generated image is genuinely good.
The antler woman facing off the moose, the Renault Dauphine parked there. The bleak landscape.
It looks like an album cover or something.
Fushca Lloyd’s “Neutron Liver Granny”
I don’t remember this episode of The Wacky Races, but it does explain why Bullwinkle never featured in that series. Poor fella ended up mounted on the wall in the evil twins cottage instead.
I figure he would have driven a Moosetang with Rocky navigating from the steering rack.
“I’m really tired of the insane customers I have to deal with for twelve an a half cents an hour. I just can’t take this any more! Goodbye, cruel world!”
Now we know the effects of lead battery dust on AI computers.
This is the funniest Torch article I’ve read in weeks and he’s had some bangers.
The truly weird aspect is that I think this ad is meant to appeal to women. You’ve got the chipper young man attending to their every need and then you’ve got the emphasis on clean rest rooms, which was most definitely a marketing strategy meant to attract female travelers. All of the oil companies emphasized restrooms in the post-war years when more people were hitting the road, especially all those women who’d learned to drive (and work outside the home) while the men were away saving the world for democracy. So, maybe guys aren’t supposed “get” this ad.
Nice perspective. Suddenly that add makes more sense.
Nah, it’s Motor Trend in 1952. It’s telling the menfolk to tell their womenfolk to get their gas at the Mobil station.
Correct. The details don’t matter because the target audience doesn’t care about them. All that matters is the fundamental truthiness of the message:
Women who stop at a Mobil gas station will find clean restrooms and a helpful man to do anything they need, no matter what that may be.
Unrelated Note: In a alarming sign of the times we live in, Apple’s spellchecker accepts “Truthiness” as a proper word known to its dictionary. We are all doomed.
Wasn’t the phrase “truthiness” coined by Stephen Colbert?
Is Apple ever wrong? /s
This baffles you Jason? You’re nearly as old as me.Surely you understand the older generation somewhat? This is just old timey humor, nothing serious intended.
Yes the gun cleaning looks slightly alarming to us, but it’s no big deal.The reader is simply required to assume he’s cleared the barrel before looking through it.
Also thanks once again for doing the AI thing.I have no idea how such things work so yours are the only examples i ever see
Hopefully that rifle is unleaded.
Unlike Jason’s respiratory system
“I’ve never seen another moose make looking being shot and killed by a couple of dowagers look so appealing”
Well they aren’t hanging about in the taillight bars, that’s for sure.
Moose appears to be sleeping, smugly dreaming about his German sports car.
A couple of things.
The Welk Sisters (Anna 1, Anna 2) shoot with iron sights: no namby-pamby optics for them!
The suspension on the car appears to be handling the unilateral moose cargo without any noticeable sagging. That’s pretty impressive.
Perhaps this is where Woody Allen got his routine from.
Shoot yourself in the head so you can come hunt with us forever Danny.
As for the AI stuff I don’t know.
Someone may be a handle of liquor deep and on peyote here.
Is it you?
Is it them?
All I can say, is if drugs isn’t the answer here I’d rather not know about it.
It was the golden age of the three-martini lunch. Plus I’m sure they’d been drinking from the time they got to the office. I base this knowledge from almost a decade of watching Mad Men.
Drugs are definitely not the answer here.
If they were you’d know about it.
The girls are on a “moose hunt” so he’s offering to “clean their rifle”. It’s all double entendre.
If i remember my old Mobile ads there should be 4 service station attendants pumping fuel, cleaning windows, checking oil tire pressure, these are old tymie women not old women so maybe Goober wants to do the humpty hump with miss Llewellyn, or maybe threesomes arent as new as we thought. Think outside the box man for gods sake
I’m so confused by the AI pictures. So very confused.
Yeah, it’s just a bunch of bull.
In one of the more awkward exchanges of pickup lines ever, the gas station attendant complimented the ladies on the fender-mounted moose ornament, telling them, “Nice rack!”. From there, the ladies handed the gun over to the attendant for inspection, telling him, “Nice guns!”.
With the action open you can look down the inside of the barrel to see if you’ve cleaned it sufficiently. You can shine a light from the action, or hold it up in the sun like the Mobil attendant is doing. It’s more comfortable to do so from the other end of the rifle, but with some the action is in the way so you do what he’s doing. So yeah, he’s cleaned their gun and is checking to make sure the bore is cleaned sufficiently.
Hard to say if bolt is still in place in the image, if it is removed then he’s not doing anything that unusual except standing on the forecourt of the servo with the rifle which probably wasn’t such a big deal back then.
I know quite a few people who use engine oil in their firearms, maybe Mobil already knew this back then?
After opening the pic in a new tab and zooming in, it looks like the bolt is still in place.
OTOH this is a humorous advert, rather than a firearm safety poster, so I think we can allow it. 🙂
> servo
Found THE Laurence Rogers!