I’ve mentioned a few times before about the strange but charming and, the more I think about it, sort of happily baffling trend of certain mostly European makers of work trucks, often huge ones, having brochures and advertising materials that contain illustrations that are uniquely characterful, and often feel like something out of a beloved children’s book. The example I want to show you today, from a 1955 Henschel HS 100HK, is particularly storybook-feeling.
Henschel (& Son) started out making steam locomotives in the mid-1800s, and by WWII the company was building all sorts of war machines, sometimes using forced labor, in probably the least charming or storybook way possible.
Maybe that’s why they felt so compelled to show their postwar trucks in such a simple, lovely way. Hoping we’d forget about all that wartime nastiness? Maybe that’s why we get brochures with paintings like this (from an artist named Hollnagel) that feel like they could have been swiped from a Little Golden Book:
I’m really taken by the raw, uncut, weapons-grade, burn-your-fingers-if-touched charminonium that saturates every bit of this thing. Look!
How does this artist make mud and an unfinished building look so appealing? Also, those clouds either represent rain or are extruded.
Is the truck fording this stream or getting a drink? I’d believe either.
Climb that hill, big little truck!
And, okay, now descend it! Also, what’s that truck laden with? Huge bricks of cocaine? Giant Twinkies?
The Henschel logo feels oddly religious to me? Like a Moravian star, sort of?
Look at that truck, driving over those stumps!
The illustrations are genuinely beautiful, I think, with just the right level of detail, the right saturation of colors, the right irregular shapes of the border of the scenes, it all just works. I love it. It’s also confusing, because is this targeted at kids? Kids who are in the market for heavy-duty logging or construction trucks? Maybe I’m underestimating the ability of people with heavy equipment jobs at mining concerns to appreciate really sweet illustrations that evoke childhood books?
You know what else I underestimated? Or who? Flava Flav.
Yes, the guy in Public Enemy who wore clocks and pulled funny faces; of course I knew he was great in a hip hop context; I didn’t realize the man could play the piano like this, too:
The man plays like 19 instruments. I somehow didn’t know this before, and that’s on me. There’s a lot I feel like I should have known about Flava Flav, including that he’s something of a hero to Olympians, helping US track and field athlete Veronica Fraley pay her rent:
I gotchu,,, DM me and I’ll send payment TODAY so you don’t have to worry bout it TOMORROW,,, and imma be rooting for ya tomorrow LETZ GO,!!!
— FLAVOR FLAV (@FlavorFlav) August 1, 2024
Incredible! And, did you know he’s sponsoring the USA Women’s Water Polo Team?
He’s also the official US Water Polo Team Hype Man:
In a world so full of dipshits and reprobates and callow fucknuts, we need more Flava Flavs. The man is an inspiration.
Once again, Instagram links are stupid and useless. Attempts to find the actual IG post with FF playing the piano were fruitless. How many pages of IG links does it take to find that specific one? This applies to every IG page link, if it isn’t on the initial page, I have yet to find it.
Just a note, he very much dislikes when he is referred to as “Flava Flav” and strongly prefers “Flavor Flav”. Carry on.
That star is from that cult mentioned in a previous Cold Start
https://www.theautopian.com/this-old-east-german-van-brochure-sorta-feels-like-a-pov-of-being-pulled-into-a-cult-cold-start/
Mr Flav has a nice touch on that piano. Fight the power!
I couldn’t pick out a FF track to save my life, but it’s always heart-warming to hear of someone practicing good humaning.
All those curving lines in the illustrations, especially in the one of the Henschel truck crossing the stream, are quite evocative of the works of Virginia Lee Burton perhaps most famous for writing and illustrating Mike Mulligan and His Steam Shovel (1939) as well as The Little House (1942) and Katy and the Big Snow (1943.) Her illustrations for The Fast Sooner Hound (1942) by Arna Bontemps and Jack Conroy have a lot of grand sweeping curves as befitting the story of a dog who could outrun even the fastest locomotive in the country:
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiR_ko2TqezkFqiKmVuh99VUeVTE2_KAhhxGG94asKf7nw-D-__oM5HoqFGi-lFwCv-IGSgj41FFIUM-UfbIa5HihIQq37uyLBujkF02iXD-GoZvoH0QI1KQhW7p5wMOahvmthXXqSN5c8/s280/Bontemps+Conroy+-+The+Fast+Sooner+Hound+-+028.jpg
Here’s a pretty good write-up about that book with more images of the illustrations:
http://wetoowerechildren.blogspot.com/2010/11/arna-bontemps-and-jack-conroy-fast.html?m=1
Since Virginia Lee Burton was such a well-known artist in the 1940s and had a lot of influence on children’s book illustration it’s quite possible that whoever illustrated the Henschel brochure drew inspiration from Burton’s oeuvre.
“Also, what’s that truck laden with? Huge bricks of cocaine? Giant Twinkies?”
Nitroglycerine!
The Wages of Fear (French: Le Salaire de la peur[a]) is a 1953 thriller film directed and co-written by Henri-Georges Clouzot, and starring Yves Montand, Charles Vanel, Peter van Eyck and Véra Clouzot. The film centres on a group of four down-on-their-luck European men who are hired by an American oil company to drive two trucks over mountain dirt roads, loaded with nitroglycerin needed to extinguish an oil well fire. It is adapted from a 1950 French novel by Georges Arnaud.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Wages_of_Fear
https://m.media-amazon.com/images/M/MV5BMGFkY2Q3ZDYtNDhlOS00YTE3LTk4MDEtNzQ4OTljNDM4MTVjL2ltYWdlL2ltYWdlXkEyXkFqcGdeQXVyMzI4Nzk0NjY@._V1_.jpg
Per Wikipedia, the truck business was folded into Hanomag and thence into Daimler, but their old factory in Kassel is one of the world’s largest producers of locomotives, as Henschel Antriebstechnik.
Maybe a certain train-enjoying writer needs a trip to central Germany? I mean, fly into Frankfurt and you got that, the Nixdorf museum, the John Cage organ, Technik museum Speyer…
All is serene in Storybook land, then you try out a mid-century, high CG, unladen chassis on a four lane roadway, and it slaps you into reality with a snap 180 when braking. Good thing they chose brown upholstery.
The big red truck went over the mountain and into the woods.
No, no, children! Don’t ask what was in the woods!
And, okay, now descend it! Also, what’s that truck laden with? Huge bricks of cocaine? Giant Twinkies?
Gravestones. It’s loaded with gravestones.
I know nothing about Hip Hop (should there be a hyphen there?) but would appreciate clarification…is it Flava or Flavor? Seems to be Flavor on his X account.
His birth certificate says Flavor, but his friends call him Flava.
It is most definitely Flavor Flav, and as I recall it’s something he’s quite insistent on (recalling an incident on his reality show where a contestant screwed it up and got booted for it).
This is hip hop:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IS2KQ46Kf84
I fully expected this to be waiting for me at the other end of that link
https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ?si=AaFC3VEcSxtun5LX&t=43
I am at work, but I am still going to click that. Hopefully it’s just Rick Astley.
That six-pointed star is identical to the ones on the official flag of the City of Chicago. I am now about to disappear down a Henschel rabbit hole.
Public Enemy is probably the best hip hop group in history. They did not represent what the world painted them as.
Flava Flav is an amazing individual and deserves all the credit.
90’s hip hop is peak human.
Don’t believe the hype!
I like Bug Butts.
I’d like to think if I had the money I’d do the same, but at this rate I’ll never find out if that’s true.