Wednesday 10 November 2010

Pedlars of Death Venuses: Manikin Advertisements from 1974



Agent Triple P doesn't find women smoking sexy.  He can't stand the smell of cigarette smoke and believes the one good thing the last government in this country did was to ban smoking in restaurants and bars.  Except now you can't sit outside in the summer because the tragic deathstick addicts are all outside polluting the atmnospher there instead.




Now, whilst we would never smoke and think cigarette smokers are the spawn of the Devil we can sort of understand cigar smoking.  I suppose it's like the difference between malt whisky (which we don't like either) and drinking methylated spirit.  Our particular friend S has been known to smoke the occasional cigar (a few a year and she doesn't smoke otherwise) and we did find that sexy.  But maybe that was just because it was S and she can make gutting fish look sexy.




Anyway, back in the mid-seventies (when the idea of sexism was something only a few deranged American women went on about) the makers of Manikin cigars, Hunters & Frankau, decided that their previous advertisements had been somewhat lacking and came up with these efforts. 


The 1932 efforts were rather lacking on the girlie front


Nothing to do with cigars of course but then many advertisements through the years have featured underdressed young women rather than the actual product. 


Fielding Dixon of Dock Green in the fifties didn't help much


You do wonder wther these ad campaigns are only dreamed up by advertising or client executives who think: "What we need is some half naked girls lounging about in the Bahamas.  I will, of course need to supervise the shoot myself"


"Hmm...I know what we need"  Sixties Manikin man doesn't realise he is about to be replaced by a woman


There were also accompanying TV advertisements (with incredibly raunchy music) also featuring scantily dressed women in the tropics that a teenage Triple P remembers as being particularly stimulating.

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