Today, in our modern world of HAM radios and toothpicks made of advanced polymers and gene splicing, it’s not surprising that we likely expect any photographic image we see to be the product of some advanced, computer-based image manipulation. You can’t ever really trust that a picture is an unaltered, genuine photograph anymore. What about back in 1978, though? Could you trust the images you saw then? I think more so than now, but there was still photographic fakery happening, and I think this cover from a 1978 Plymouth Volare brochure may contain an example.
Can you see what I’m talking about? It’s not on the car itself, which I think is being presented in all its accurate, Volare-ic glory.
Here’s the full page if you want to scrutinize it more closely:
See what I’m talking about? No? Maybe? Well, regardless, I think it’s this bit:
Yes, the dude excited by the stack of seven ice cream scoops on one cone, listing nervously to the left. So here’s my suspicion: physics, as we understand it, and as it was understood way back in 1978, does not allow for such an ice cream stack. The slippage between scoops is just too great, especially in the partially-melted state we see here, and it is my theory that those ice cream scoops were added to the photo via old-school X-acto knife and airbrush techniques, or, perhaps, those ice cream scoops are not ice cream at all, but rather some clever facsimile, and held in place with some hidden rod or dowel.
Repeated calls to the Plymouth HQ just got me a tired-sounding woman telling me, repeatedly, that the Plymouth Division has been closed since 2001 and can I please tell someone at Chrysler they need to let her out of the office, so I got no insight there.
That model there is really acting up a storm, though, looking absolutely thrilled about that tower of ice cream, which is, perhaps, the “Super Scoop” advertised on that window.
The Volaré – whose name is taken from the Italian infinitive “to fly,” but, significantly, without the accent – was a soft, pretty half-assed attempt from Chrysler to make a compact car, which – and I’m speaking from direct experience here – drove on the highway like a wallowy turd cascading down a river of sewage in a sewer pipe, if you’ll allow me to be poetic.
There was a popular song at the time called Volare, sung by the guy in this commercial:
Want to hear the whole song now? Sure you do!
Oh, yeah, baby, that’s the stuff!
Anyway, back to Volarés. One thing I did kind of like about this car – and other cars of the era – was the willingness of carmakers to just really dress up the same car in some wildly different, um, costumes. Like, for example, the coupé version of the Volare could be had like this, nice and reserved and staid and respectable:
…though for some reason ice cream dork is still here, surrounded by adoring ladies and still absolutely wowed by that…triple-scoop cone:
I mean, they’re all really amused by it, including blondie in the back there, looking on with quiet but satisfied approval, while everyone else seems to be inspired to laughter.
Okay, back to the cars, though. So, you can get that same, reserved Volaré coupé in this form, too:
Look at that! slats over the rear quarter windows, a likely useless spoiler, fantastic stripes, the works! These things had the same sorta-anemic Slant-Six engines as the other variants, but they were just treated to stripe kits and plastic stuff glued to the car which did definitely change the character of the car. Silly, sure, but kinda fun, too.
Oh, and I also have to donate props to Plymouth for being an early American adopter of amber rear turn indicators:
They weren’t the first American car to use them (the Ford Mustang II gets that credit in 1974 if you don’t count the Excalibur, which used amber-equipped VW taillights in ’73) but they were one of the few to do so in the ’70s, and I appreciate that.
I’m still skeptical of that ice cream, though.
All kinds of Freudian stuff going on in that picture – and what’s with the creepy guy off to the left eating a banana split?
Its either a disapproving priest, or someone planning a hit – or both.
I’ll just leave this here…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JIkj6-72uwQ
“Repeated calls to the Plymouth HQ ” Did Plymouth have their own HQ? I can’t find anything saying they had their own facilities.
Why would the ad agency insist on the street being so strangely “‘desserted” behind the car?
On the blue bomb in the first pic the panel gaps on the quarter panel & door shut lines look drawn in too.
They may have just been that bad.
If only a stacked up ice cream cone still impressed the ladies…
Photo-chopping would have been way to expensive for Chrysler budgets, so either they are using real ice cream with a coat hanger in the middle to hold it together or they used fake ice cream.
My father was a commercial illustrator who did a lot of automotive work, especially for Oldsmobile and later Mercedes Benz. He would refer to these photos as “retouched”. Often some details didn’t come through such as badging, reflections, dirt, or in this case ice cream. Sometimes these retouched photos could be very modified to show backgrounds that weren’t present, etc. There’s only so much resolution available but the ad guys want to see certain things so artists were used to add the detail.
Yes, *but*, one could stack that many scoops of ice-cream using a stick as a support. So the question is: where were the laws of physics actually meddled with? In the studio or the darkroom?
Shameful that an American hero can be forgotten so quickly. This is Salvatore “Scoops” Tuttle, February 29th 1977 winner of the The Gong Show, who amazed all with his ice cream scoops balancing act. He went on to appear on stage and screen (watch out for his hilarious cameo in Cannonball Run 3 aka Speed Zone!), and also had a lucrative career in promotions, including partnering with Plymouth for a series of delightful advertising campaigns, highlighting his skill and showmanship. Sadly after some poor investment decisions, he mysteriously vanished in 1981 after the brutal murder of his accountant and has been wanted for questioning by the FBI.
This is so believable I don’t know what I’m supposed to think, but I choose this timeline
Please, make this a Wikipedia entry. Much in the style of Tlon, Uqbar, Orbis and Tertius.
We are looking at this through the wrong end of the telescope.
The real question should be:
” What happened to Gilligan’s hat? “
Wow! Thanks for that detailed update, I’ve not seen any other updates on Salvatore.
Great scoop ! 😉
Average guys have 4-5 scoops. The ones with 7 scoops get the attention of the ladies, though some do find it a bit too much.
Seems and looks like overcompensation.
And overconsumption.
In college, my roommate and I won an ice cream cone stacking event with 11 scoops on a single cone. The ice cream had to be really cold to stick and stay and you only had about a minute, at best to get it done before gravity, axis tilt, and melting brought it all down. So, tuition money well spent. Don’t know if the car photos are fake, but suspect- since photography expenses aren’t cheap (even then) – rather than waste the photographer’s time trying to stack ice cream, they faked it.
Hey, no one mentioned two other things: first, the Volare is parked on the wrong side of the street in an intersection, and second, who’s the Charlie Chaplin clone sitting on the bench? Did Chaplin ever have an ice cream cone stacking bit in any of his films? I know he used ice cream and cones as a foil in some of his work.
Let’s not forget the episode of Cheers where Sam has to sell his Corvette and ends up driving a Volare, and the gang at the bar trolls him relentlessly by singing Volare
Friend in college had a 76 Volare that made it back in forth between eastern PA and the Boston metro area for 4 years. I’d get picked up and dropped off in between.
Appropriate, as the only time I’ve ever been completely airborne in a car was while driving my ’79 Volaré Duster.
Cheapest car I ever bought was a ’78 Volare Sport Coupe, with a Slant Six and an automatic. I paid $175 for it, which was all I could afford at the time. The other choice was a Mazda GLC with an automatic that wouldn’t shift out of second gear, so the Volare was actually the good choice. It actually made a pretty good winter beater; it was reliable (after I bypassed the ammeter in the dash, and disconnected/plugged all the emissions crap going to the carb), and with some cheap secondhand truck tires on the back, it went pretty well in the snow. I drove it through the winter, and then sold it for $400.
I am just old enough to remember how horrible everything was in the 1970s.
My brother had one of those Volarés, in a sickly green and the basest of base trims, down to the three on the tree. I can still smell the new vinyl when he got it. He dressed it up with some baby moon wheel covers.
Do you even see the fender treatment with the molded mudflaps on the go fast version on modern cars anymore?
The “Ice Cream” is most likely Play-Doh!
when i was working in restaurants, our pastry kitchens used lard and food coloring to simulate ice cream/sorbet on the dessert cart. Not sure if that would stack as well as playdoh, or hold up under spots, but maybe with a dowel.
Interesting and also revolting (lard!?) 😉
tools at hand in a pastry kitchen.
I read somewhere that food stylists would use mashed potatoes in ad shoots because there’s no way ice cream would hold up for even minutes under the lights of a photo shoot or TV set.
Indeed, It is Mashed potatoes colored. As a photog of the 70s, I learned the intricacies of creating wihpped potato and coloring. It really is not that hard But it will NOT melt. You do not use milk, but Elmers glue and a bit of water. And Voila! with sprinkles and food coloring, it works for hours.
I’m not a graphic artist, and my eyes are fairly old, but the bunch of them look like they where cut and pasted from another image with a slightly different perspective.
If you get the ladies’ ’70s hair styles to stay put with White Rain, you can use it on the ice cream too. Just don’t actually eat it!
Might as well these days there’s plastic in everything.
As a professional graphics person, I’m gonna say the first photo with the ice cream stack tipping over is legit. There’s a nice fuzz to the edges, and rhe shadows seem consistent.
The second one, however, clearly looks modified. That halo around it smacks of a cut-and-paste job.
The car is kinda cool, in a malaise era way.
Does that guy need to see someone from bentcarrot.com?
They almost certainly used fake ice cream, so no need to edit the picture later to get that lean. A lot of commercials/ads use fake food so that the laws of physics can’t meddle with the perfect shot.
If only ice cream could still make me that happy today. Good for him and his childlike wonder at an over-stacked cone. My joy would be tempered by thoughts of too much sugar and too many calories.
And I don’t remember ice cream being made in some of those colors in the 1970s. I think this is Play-Doh.
You have to give credit to the girl in the bumble-bee sweater, she’s actually pretending to eat some of that fake ice cream.
As a child I’m pretty sure I consumed more than my fair share of play-doh, but the passage of time has taught me that, although eating modeling clay may not be particularly detrimental to long-term health, green food coloring in the 1970s was almost certainly toxic.
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