Photo: Lucasfilm/Disney

There’s a bunch of new print ads out for Disney’s Star Wars Weekends, and they’re pretty funny.  See Darth Vader wait in line, Ewoks get denied, TIE fighters at airport gates and more at The Chive.

This 11-month old baby isn’t even their youngest customer! The ad copy also says:

By the way, Mom, when it comes to toddlers- if they liked to be coaxed to drink their milk, try this: add 7-Up to the milk in equal parts, pouring the 7-Up gently into the milk. It’s a wholesome combination- and it works!

Click the picture at Kitchen Retro to see the full-size version of this and other vintage ads. Link -via J-Walk Blog

This post at The Future of the Cookbook tells how Jell-O became “America’s Most Famous Dessert,” before it was even familiar! Jell-O’s early promotional advertising included recipes, recommendations from doctors, and adorable kewpies. Link -via Everlasting Blort

You ought to wonder what a wind-blown skirt and cleavage have to do with shoeshine, but you know what was on the minds of the men who came up with this advertisement! See more hilarious and suggestive magazine ads from the 40’s-60’s at Divine Caroline.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by StigNordas.

Nothing draws attention like oversized objects, and when you’re traveling along the highway, hungry people notice big food. During the 1930s, buildings that look like something else popped up all over to draw in travelers, and many still exist. See 24 examples of appetizing architecture in this collection. Shown is the Big Duck in Flanders, New York. Link -via the Presurfer

Tell her if she finds SPAM to buy it at once!

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by notoriousnicholas.

British tabloid Daily Mail recently noticed that some Chinese products have suspiciously familiar names, occasionally with really funny results.

Do you think your children would notice if you brought them home a Polystation 2?  Or maybe you’re in the market for some Birkinsticks?  I can’t wait until someone opens the first branch of McDucks or Pizza Huh in my neighborhood!

Link – via fark

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ccmushroom.

The Mugabe regime has destroyed Zimbabwe. It has presided over the brutal oppression of the opposition, a cholera crises, massive food shortages and the total collapse of their economy. Furthermore anyone brave enough to report this has been bullied, beaten and driven into exile. One such group is ‘the Zimbabwean Newspaper’. However, not content with having hounded these journalists out, the regime has slapped an import ‘luxury’ duty of over 55% on them which makes the paper unaffordable for the average Zimbabwean. In order to subsidize the paper they need to sell it in England and South Africa, to raise the foreign currency.

A unique campaign was devised to promote the paper to raise awareness and increase readership. One of the most eloquent symbols of Zimbabwe’s collapse is the Z$100 trillion dollar note, a symptom of their world record inflation. This note cannot buy anything, not even a loaf of bread and certainly not any advertising, but it can become the advertising, it can be a powerful reminder about Zimbabwe’s plight and the need to hold someone accountable.

Link – via thehouseofmarketing

From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by frankiejones.

He didn’t just do this for fun, though… it’s actually an Arby’s ad.

Link via Slashfood

Previously on Neatorama: Bruce Lee Speed Painting | Phil Hansen’s Influence: a Body Paint Art

They’re screwed down though, which makes them safer but rather counterproductive.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by ant8627.

As part of Gatorade’s new branding campaign (apparently research shows more people will buy sugar water if it’s called “G”), TBWA/Chiat/Day and Tarsem teamed up to make a brilliant parody of Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Enjoy this ten minute film, as King Kevin Garnett and various other athletes go on a quest for hydration. Can’t say it made me want to buy more . . . G, but I’d buy a pagan Kareem and his talking goat herald toy in a second.

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From the Upcoming ueue, submitted by Christophe.

•  were substantially easier to remember
• more likely to be watched by viewers
• played more often.
• Political ads were defined by these first ads on television.

From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by seth1492.

Back in the l960s when the watchword was "better living through chemistry,"  furniture manufacturers created an impervious vinyl upholstery and named it Naugahyde. 

To encourage consumers to buy it, some advertising folks came up with the Naugahyde monster campaign:  "The Nauga is ugly.  But his vinyl hide is beautiful."   Those clever Mad Men!

Link – via pzrservices

From the Upcoming Queue, submitted by Marilyn Terrell.

Rob Lammle has a new article at Mental Floss describing currently ongoing alternate reality games. I hadn’t heard of almost any of them, including this site, which is related to the new Dreamworks movie Monsters vs. Aliens. The article also lists some ARG resources, which you might want to familiarize yourself with before The Watchmen ARG begins.

The website for Laika’s upcoming movie Coraline is once again active with more than making of featurettes. Spend some time exploring Coraline’s house and you’ll find clips from the movie, desktop wallpapers, posters, and even a pattern for knitting a sweater. There’s also a photo of the limited edition Nike Coraline Dunks that you’ll have a chance to win using a password that will be shown after the credits of the movie. One potential mystery is that there’s a piano you can play. Maybe playing a special tune unlocks something?

A teacher who could no longer afford to print out the tests for his classes has taken to selling ads on his students’ tests. The current pricing is $10 per quiz, $20 per test and $30 per final. Most of the ads are from parents and local businesses. What kind of a message would you put on your kid’s test?

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Ah, misogyny, one of the final frontiers of terrible, terrible inequalities in our society. It’s amazing that only in the 60’s sexism was so prevailent in advertising. Sometimes you see ads these days and think how prejudiced they are, but seeing these makes me think “thank god for the advancements in our society.” Maybe in another 40 years sexism really will be totally gone from the marketing industry, but I doubt it.

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Enter billboard cameras, the type that can monitor not only how many people see a billboard, but what type of people they are too:

They are equipping billboards with tiny cameras that gather details about passers-by — their gender, approximate age and how long they looked at the billboard. These details are transmitted to a central database. Behind the technology are small start-ups that say they are not storing actual images of the passers-by, so privacy should not be a concern. The cameras, they say, use software to determine that a person is standing in front of a billboard, then analyze facial features (like cheekbone height and the distance between the nose and the chin) to judge the person’s gender and age. So far the companies are not using race as a parameter, but they say that they can and will soon. The goal, these companies say, is to tailor a digital display to the person standing in front of it — to show one advertisement to a middle-aged white woman, for example, and a different one to a teenage Asian boy.

Nothing could go wrong with this plan, right? Hit the Link and decide for yourself.

(image by flickr user simon scott)