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.
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.
Let’s look at this brochure. What’s going on here? Why’s that old dude so worked up?
I tried using some translation software on this page to get some clues, but I’m not sure it helped that much:
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.
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?
Well, that’s lifted right from this Saturday Evening Post cover:
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?
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.
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.
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
Great little car, we need one in our JDM lives here! 😀
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. 🙂
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
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.
The way he seems to be shouting it implies that the invitation may not be optional…
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
I remember “The Gossips” being the cover of one year in the 70s of our local phone book! (Remember those? Thanks, Ma Bell! ????)
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.
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? )
Maybe you are. But I am not a member of the word police.
Have a good weekend.
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.
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.
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.
“Post-war Japan was a very bleak place”
I heard differently. It was positively glowing!
What, too soon?
The WWII American soldier with the USO ladies is an interesting choice for selling a car in Japan in the late Showa era
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!
Mighty Boy sounds about right once you park it next to a Mighty Max
And it brought a parking meter they can both use!
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)
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?”
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.
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.
By the look on the face of that parking meter, it’s seen some shit.
Also, it looks like it’s good to be that soldier in the upper left of that same image.
I, TOO, HAVE NEVER HEARD OF THE MIGHTY BOY BUT NOW I WANT ONE!, he shouted in the comment section.
That ICEE is actual size.
Like most parents I had hopes for a Mighty Boy and had to settle for a BRAT.
Bravo, Sir. Bravo.
I’d take a Brat now!
The Japanese are more inscrutable than Jason waking from anesthesia.
when I was a kid I wanted a Mighty Boy so bad
you might say I had a mighty need
I’ve never heard of this vehicle until this very post. Its amazing.