by david allan van nostrand | Aug 1, 2022 | Fads, Human Behavior, The Wayback Machine
As P.G. Wodehouse once wrote, “What’s wrong with flies being in ointment, what harm do they do and who wants ointment anyway?” Perhaps he was unfamiliar with the following verse from the Book of Ecclesiastes: “Dead flies cause the apothecary’s ointment to send...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 25, 2022 | Items in the News, The Wayback Machine
Snow globes are transparent spheres of glass or plastic filled with a clear liquid and enclosing a miniaturized scene. Paperweights, ornaments, souvenirs and collector’s items, snow globes are little worlds that sit in the palm of your hand. Shaking the sphere...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 18, 2022 | Americana, Point of view, The Wayback Machine
Amos ’n’ Andy was one of the most controversial and polarizing shows in the history of the United States. television. History professor Joshua K. Wright, writing in Abernathy Magazine, asks an excellent question: Did this television series become a scapegoat for black...
by david allan van nostrand | Jul 4, 2022 | Americana, Marketing, The Wayback Machine
This is the third of a three-part series about advertising characters in the United States. The first told the stories of the four greatest fictional characters to personify a brand and the second related the histories of the four greatest real-life television...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 27, 2022 | Americana, Anthropology, Marketing, The Wayback Machine
In the 1950s, 60s and 70s, advertisers hired lots of second- and third-tier actors to play fictitious characters in their TV commercials. Jesse White was the lonely Maytag Repairman, Jan Miner played Madge the Manicurist for Palmolive dishwashing liquid, Nancy Walker...
by david allan van nostrand | Jun 20, 2022 | Americana, Anthropology, Marketing, The Wayback Machine
The Chicago World’s Fair was opened to the first of 27 million visitors when U.S. president Grover Cleveland pushed a button and the newfangled electric lighting dazzled goggle-eyed fairgoers who only knew lanterns and candles. PBS tells us “Visitors gawked at...
