Home » This Norman Rockwell-Inspired Suzuki Mighty Boy Brochure Is Kinda Baffling: Cold Start

This Norman Rockwell-Inspired Suzuki Mighty Boy Brochure Is Kinda Baffling: Cold Start

Cs Rockwell Mightyboy1
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You know what seems like a really fun and useful vehicle to have? A Suzuki Mighty Boy. At first glance, it seems sort of absurd, a tiny, Kei-sized trucklet with the most diminutive bed you’ve ever seen. But I have a feeling that little bed would be more useful than you’d initially guess, and I can imagine all sorts of situations where a nimble little truck would be just the right tool. I’m pro-Mighty Boy. However, that doesn’t mean I’m not kind of baffled by this 1985 Mighty Boy brochure that seems to be using Norman Rockwell paintings and illustrations?

I certainly respect Norman Rockwell as an artist and illustrator, and while he’s not exactly my cup of 20W-50 as far as what I’d want to hang in my house, the man was a remarkable artist and incredibly prolific. Sometimes his work strays into a peculiar sort of hyper-real caricature that I think gets interesting, and could have been pushed even further, had he, perhaps, been in a different era and had different goals. Who knows.

Vidframe Min Top
Vidframe Min Bottom

Anyway, he liked drawing people with bold expressions and, often, yelling, and for some reason that’s what Suzuki decided would sell some Mighty Boys, which were the cheapest four-wheeled vehicle you could buy in Japan at the time.

Cs Rockwell Mightyboy Justtruck

Let’s look at this brochure. What’s going on here? Why’s that old dude so worked up?

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Cs Rockwell Mightyboy 2

I tried using some translation software on this page to get some clues, but I’m not sure it helped that much:

Cs Rockwell Mightyboy Trans

The old man’s word balloon just gets transliterated as Oirat Ikowyo which I’ve yet been able to translate, but I like knowing that Mighty Boy will “protect their world.” A lot to ask from a tiny truck, but this boy is, after all, mighty.

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Cs Rockwell Mightyboy 3

Next we have two pretty redheaded ladies, dressed like they’ve maybe been doing gardening? Arguing with the aid of some 8×10 headshots of…someone. A soldier? This feels WWII-era. The pictured yellow Mighty Boy is hauling a matching yellow, very short double parking meter, for reasons I can’t begin to understand. But it sure looks great in yellow! I’d happily rock a yellow Mighty Boy.

Oh and I just noticed the small black one above it is hauling a colossal Icee? What the hell?

This next one is interesting, because it’s the only one I found exactly where the Rockwell imagery was taken from. See the scrawny guy, lifting weights there?

Cs Rockwell Mightyboy4

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Well, that’s lifted right from this Saturday Evening Post cover:

Cs Rockwell Mightyboy Champ

Som these are definitely actual Norman Rockwell illustrations; I wonder if Suzuki licensed them from The Saturday Evening Post instead of Rockwell’s estate? He did plenty of covers for The Post so that could be likely.

Was this aesthetic big in Japan in the mid-’80s? And why associate that tiny truck with old wartime/postwar America? You’d think the WWII-era stuff wouldn’t be appealing to Japan given all the, you know, goings-on?

Anyway, I’m still sort of confused, but in an amused way. Conamused?

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Vetatur Fumare
Vetatur Fumare
1 month ago

Love your apparent love for old Suzukis. I have scheduled a visit to the Suzuki Museum in Hamamatsu around Thanksgiving, I’ll see if the museum personnel has any enlightenment on hand.

Aardvark775
Aardvark775
1 month ago

Cold Start is my favorite part of the Autopian. I love the posts like this which explore bizarre intersections between the artistic and automotive worlds. I can’t imagine discovering the existence of something like these brochures anywhere else.

Space
Space
1 month ago

Norman Rockwell’s art is interesting, it’s almost like memes from before the internet.

Black Peter
Black Peter
1 month ago
Reply to  Space

This is a quality take

Urban Runabout
Urban Runabout
1 month ago

It makes a lot more sense when you understand the Japanese cultural fascination for vintage Americana.

When I lived there in the early 90s’, i found a shop that specialized in nothing but vintage Levis jeans. Young people would wear them like badges of honor – cinched in at the waist, and high-water pant legs – because of their impossibly slim hips and long legs.

Black Peter
Black Peter
1 month ago
Reply to  Urban Runabout

Germany too.. Levi’s meant you had enough money to pay retail ($120 in 90s money) or had been to America. The context or meaning of the images aren’t important, just the wild Americanness of them.

Martin Dollinger
Martin Dollinger
1 month ago

Lightning really struck twice with this story. I just learned about Norman Rockwell and this exact brochure last month in a German car brochure Facebook group.

Slow Joe Crow
Slow Joe Crow
1 month ago

The Mighty Boy was very popular in Australia, perhaps there are some English language brochures that can supply enlightenment, unless the Rockwell was only JDM

Matthew Parsons
Matthew Parsons
1 month ago
Reply to  Slow Joe Crow

In Sydney my uncle bought a new Mighty Boy in white in the mid-1980’s. It was a lot of fun to drive. Today’s trivia, did you know you can fit three people in a Mighty Boy cabin? One in each seat, and one sideways behind the seats! That tiny three cylinder engine used to work hard but sound enthusiastic, and hardly sip fuel. The perfect city car!

I put a vinyl cutout of Mickey Mouse on the rear tailgate for maximum response from excited people in cars which followed.

Jakob K's Garage
Jakob K's Garage
1 month ago

Great little car, we need one in our JDM lives here! 😀

Ben
Ben
1 month ago

Oh and I just noticed the small black one above it is hauling a colossal Icee? What the hell?

It’s good you pointed that out because I might have assumed you photoshopped it in there. It’s saying something when an actual ad has Torch-level insanity included. 🙂

Morgan van Humbeck
Morgan van Humbeck
1 month ago

I live on a remote island in BC and there are tons of kei trucks here. You simply cannot fathom how capable they are. I’ve ridden in one with so much lumber in the back that we had to sit forward to keep the front wheels on the ground and it never missed a beat

CrystalEyes
CrystalEyes
1 month ago

As a resident of Vancouver Island I can confirm.

Marvin Perkins
Marvin Perkins
1 month ago

The man is saying Oirato, which means let’s go. My wife (Japanese) says the closest English translation of what he’s saying is “let’s go with me” or, like we’d say, “come with me”, like he’s inviting the lady for a ride.

Thomas Metcalf
Thomas Metcalf
1 month ago
Reply to  Marvin Perkins

The way he seems to be shouting it implies that the invitation may not be optional…

Vetatur Fumare
Vetatur Fumare
1 month ago
Reply to  Marvin Perkins

The second word is いこうよ, ikou yo, it’s just unusual to see it written in katakana rather than hiragana. Might be to indicate that they’re foreigners (katakana is used for writing foreign words and loan words) or perhaps to add emphasis?

Joshua Mackay-Smith
Joshua Mackay-Smith
1 month ago

Several of the images are from “The Gossips,” subject of this blurb from the Norman Rockwell Museum: https://www.nrm.org/2014/02/norman-rockwell-museum-welcomes-back-norman-rockwells-the-gossips/

The two young women with pictures of the same man is “Double Trouble for Willie Gillis,” one of a series featuring a fictional soldier (in absentia in this case): https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2011/05/allamerican-soldier-willie-gillis/

Young Willie appears in person in the upper left corner of the same page in “Willie Gillis at the USO:” https://prints.nrm.org/detail/260928/rockwell-willie-gillis-at-the-uso-1942

Tammi Clark
Tammi Clark
1 month ago

I remember “The Gossips” being the cover of one year in the 70s of our local phone book! (Remember those? Thanks, Ma Bell! ????)

AlterId
AlterId
1 month ago

And the double mailbox in the back of the yellow Mighty Boy refers back to the “Double Trouble” picture as well.

This got me scrolling through the pictures available as prints from the Norman Rockwell Museum, and I’m actually quite impressed by the sophistication that underpins these supposedly simple and folksy depictions of “idealized” mid-century Middle America, even before “The Trouble We All Live With” and “Murder in Mississippi.” The compositions and collections of objects remind me of Dutch Renaissance documentarians and Hogarth. Thanks for getting me to take another look, Torch.

Canopysaurus
Canopysaurus
1 month ago

In the 80s, Japanese culture did embrace a highly stylized aesthetic based on post-war American prosperity. US military presence and industrial investment were everywhere in Japan in the 1950s and came to represent a sort of ideal. The 80s nostalgia for the idealized 50s probably accounts for the use of Rockwell’s American stereotypes to appeal to the then Japanese yen (pun unintended) for period imagery. Kind of the way Happy Days and American Graffiti and pop music covers of old rock n roll tunes reflected American nostalgia for the 50s post Watergate.

Last edited 1 month ago by Canopysaurus
Dale Mitchell
Dale Mitchell
1 month ago
Reply to  Canopysaurus

Seems odd that Americans of European decent are used in their advertising.
( Am I trying too hard not to say the word opposite of black to describe them? )

Col Lingus
Col Lingus
1 month ago
Reply to  Dale Mitchell

Maybe you are. But I am not a member of the word police.
Have a good weekend.

Canopysaurus
Canopysaurus
1 month ago
Reply to  Dale Mitchell

Post-war Japan was a very bleak place. America, on the other hand was well into its ascendancy on the world stage. Americans in the forms of industrialists, investors, and military governors were practically omnipresent there and represented a new prosperity to which the Japanese could aspire. Nostalgia made images of Americans from the 50s era popular. They’re almost as Japanese as baseball, hot dog eating contests and Genji pie.

Tbird
Tbird
1 month ago
Reply to  Canopysaurus

Grew up late gen X when Japan was at it’s complete ascendancy in cars, electronics, technology, etc… These ads seem very weird to me.

Last edited 1 month ago by Tbird
Canopysaurus
Canopysaurus
1 month ago
Reply to  Tbird

They are, but those were also home market ads designed for Japanese consumers, not us. I think versions did appear in Australia because I know the Mighty Boy was sold there.

Cheap Bastard
Cheap Bastard
1 month ago
Reply to  Canopysaurus

“Post-war Japan was a very bleak place”

I heard differently. It was positively glowing!

What, too soon?

Last edited 1 month ago by Cheap Bastard
AlterId
AlterId
1 month ago
Reply to  Cheap Bastard

Nah – that joke’s just about at the end of its half-life.

Phuzz
Phuzz
1 month ago
Reply to  Dale Mitchell

From a perspective from outside the US, I don’t think anyone is particularly envious of the lives that black Americans have to lead, (even now), so I’m not surprised they weren’t used as ‘aspirational’ models in advertising in the 1980’s.

Ranwhenparked
Ranwhenparked
1 month ago

The WWII American soldier with the USO ladies is an interesting choice for selling a car in Japan in the late Showa era

AssMatt
AssMatt
1 month ago

I think the leftmost of the “pretty redheaded ladies” is wearing skis to lean that far forward.

And hell yes to that asymmetrical front grille!

Baja_Engineer
Baja_Engineer
1 month ago

Mighty Boy sounds about right once you park it next to a Mighty Max

Lincoln Clown CaR
Lincoln Clown CaR
1 month ago
Reply to  Baja_Engineer

And it brought a parking meter they can both use!

Doug Kingham
Doug Kingham
1 month ago

I assume that this was inspired by the recent death of the scrawny guy lifting weights: Thomas Rockwell, 91, Dies; Taught Children ‘How to Eat Fried Worms’ – The New York Times (nytimes.com)

Last edited 1 month ago by Doug Kingham
David Smith
David Smith
1 month ago
Reply to  Doug Kingham

https://www.nrm.org/wp2016/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Boy_Graduate.800×800.jpeg
From your link to another one.
“auto insurance: why so costly?”

Cheap Bastard
Cheap Bastard
1 month ago

Pretty sure the red head in the skirt is proposing a Ménage à trois with soldier boy to Rosie Riveter and Rosie’s not taking it well.

Otter
Otter
1 month ago
Reply to  Cheap Bastard

I was thinking it was mighty kind of the one on the left to pull on some gloves and help her friend finish her chores so they could go play tennis. My fantasies are so pedestrian.

MATTinMKE
MATTinMKE
1 month ago

By the look on the face of that parking meter, it’s seen some shit.

MATTinMKE
MATTinMKE
1 month ago
Reply to  MATTinMKE

Also, it looks like it’s good to be that soldier in the upper left of that same image.

Hotdoughnutsnow
Hotdoughnutsnow
1 month ago

I, TOO, HAVE NEVER HEARD OF THE MIGHTY BOY BUT NOW I WANT ONE!, he shouted in the comment section.

Geoff Buchholz
Geoff Buchholz
1 month ago

That ICEE is actual size.

Sid Bridge
Sid Bridge
1 month ago

Like most parents I had hopes for a Mighty Boy and had to settle for a BRAT.

Gilbert Wham
Gilbert Wham
1 month ago
Reply to  Sid Bridge

Bravo, Sir. Bravo.

Tammi Clark
Tammi Clark
1 month ago
Reply to  Sid Bridge

I’d take a Brat now!

Chronometric
Chronometric
1 month ago

The Japanese are more inscrutable than Jason waking from anesthesia.

Groover
Groover
1 month ago

when I was a kid I wanted a Mighty Boy so bad
you might say I had a mighty need

Nick Fortes
Nick Fortes
1 month ago

I’ve never heard of this vehicle until this very post. Its amazing.

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