Old Commercials

I thought this deserved to be its own post in case not everyone reads the comments...

Brian found this collection of black and white commercials. I enjoyed the awkward silence at the end of one of the Remmington commercials. The guy is just standing there holding this 25 pound razor for 10-15 seconds. "Remember the demonstration with the peach and the hairbrush"... what the hell??

Great Grandmother and the Black Dahlia

So, I am psyched for the movie version of the Black Dahlia that is coming out. When I saw the preview on TV the other day I was so shocked I stopped what I was doing and just stared with my mouth open.

For those of you who haven't read it, The Black Dahlia by James Ellroy is one of my favorite novels. James Ellroy is also the author of L.A. Confidential and several other great 1950's detective stories. Ellroy is a fascinating author, not only because of his sparse writing style, but also because a lot of his novels were influenced by his own mother's murder in 1958. If you haven't read Black Dahlia, please, please, please read it BEFORE you see the movie!

And what does all of this have to do with Vintage Bug? Well, today I was looking through an old newspaper for bits to save and noticed that it was a paper from 1947 that contained the obituary of my Great Grandmother Margaret.

In German? Yup. It is from the January 27, 1947 edition of the Abendpost, Chicago's German newspaper. But what does this have to do with the Black Dahlia?

Well, this article was right next to my great-grandmother's obituary.

Eric isn't as fluent in German as he used to be, but it was pretty obvious that this is an article about the Black Dahlia. Hmmm...pretty weird, huh?

The Joys of Cigarettes

Today's post is brought to you by Uncle Cousin Pat, who apparently has an eye for great vintage stuff. Which is good, because I am a little sleepy and I don't feel like being funny. And on that note; enjoy!

Yes, not a single case of throat irritation....because dead people can't complain! Ahh...the gray areas of advertising...

Thanks, Pat! These are great!

Bakery Part II

Now let's gloss over a few months to July.

Yes, let's celebrate the birth of our country by eating a baby eaglet. What is this? What in the world was going through the mind of the good people at the Baker's Coconut company when they published this book? This is the kind of thing that turns good solid Americans into Communists.

"HAIL OUR EAGLET!"

Bakery of Horrors

Ahhh...coconut. It makes everything all pretty and delicious. Right? RIGHT!?!??

Well, maybe not these cakes. The "Cut-Up" cakes in this book aren't scary. They suffer from something worse than that. A total lack of imagination. They are the kind of cake that if you went to a birthday party and you were served this cake, you would feel really, really sorry for the birthday kid. There is a cake in this dumb book for every month, so I am going to hold some back to wait for their appropriate month. But since half the year is gone already (when did that happen, anyway?), I thought I could make up for the months I missed.



The cake from March is pathetic in every form.

Coco the Nutty Clown may not have a great name, or really resemble a clown, but damn it, he's got heart. Or, to be more specific, he has an apple nose. And not a regular apple either. That is a crab apple. Sick. What if Coco could talk? What would he say?

Happy Frickin birthday, kid. All you get this year is me. A crappy clown with a crab apple nose. And the worst part is, there is no cocoa in me at all. No, the Coco stands for coconut. Awesome.

A New, Fun Way to Start Fires

Today's installment is from a cookbook entitled "How to Be a Cookout Champion". This one from the 1950's, which isn't really the target time period I was going for, but it was so freaky I just had to add it.

The Cookout Champion cookbook has plenty of weird recipes, like Carnation Evaporated Milk Hamburgers and "Eskimo Squirtcicles" (I am just going to let you wonder about that one). There is even an especially gross picture of a chili dog. But the best is this:

Siz. Is it whip cream? Is it ligher fluid? All I know is this: you had better not serve any shortcake at your cookout, otherwise someone might just burn their face off. According to the above ad, Siz burns at 1120 degrees!

Devil Bat's Daughter!!

Ok, sorry about the missing posts. You know, I kept thinking "Oh, I'm going to update Vintage Bug tomorrow" and then all of a sudden it is Saturday and I haven't done crap. Ah...such is life.

Anyway, here are a few things that I found to make up for it. I think they are pretty good, if I do say so myself...

This scan above is great because....well...LOOK AT IT! IT'S PETER PAIN! Everyone loves Peter Pain. Except for that guy.


Ha ha ha...ahh...it's funny because it's a bug.

This one is for you, Patrick.

All kidding aside, this film was apparently created by the German director Frank Wisbar as a sequel to the 1940's hit, Devil Bat , with Bela Lugosi. It deals with a girl, daughter of the original murder in the first Devil Bat, who falls under suspicion after a she repeatedly passes out at the scenes of some local murders. The "daughter" is also Miss America from 1941. But according to a couple of reviews on the internet, there are actually NO bats in this movie. No bats. That would be a real letdown for me.

So, I hope this lived up to everyone's expectations and took away any disappointment from the previous missing posts. I promise to do better in the future. And in the meantime enjoy....THE UNDERWATER JEEP!!!

Newspaper Ad - 1946

He conquered "men with his sword"? Is that really something they want to advertise?

The Doughnut Corporation of America

For my first posting, I decided to begin with a bang. Or begin with a donut, as the case may be.
I bring you a great cookbook I found with my grandmother's things. 36 Delightful Recipes looks very innocent, cute and small. At just 15 pages it's more of a pamphlet than an actual receipe book. It isn't until you open its cute cover to you realize the depth of its evil:

Doesn't seem so bad, does it? Well, it gets you in slow stages. Notice who has published this great book. The Doughnut Corporation of America. For a little background, The Doughnut Corporation of America, or DCA, was formed 1920 by Adolph Levitt, inventor of the automatic donut making machine. Sounds delicious, doesn't it? Sort of the thing you would be happy to lay under all day with your mouth open. Anyway, Mr. Levitt is also the father of the "donut chain", opening a store called "Mayflower" in 1931 and ulitmately having 18 stores nationwide. Which was a big deal at the time. The DCA is still around today, manufacturing specialized donut-making equipment to most commercial donut chains, including Dunkin' Donuts and Entenmanns.

So, you have to ask yourself, can the creator of such happiness and deliciousness make something evil? The answer is: Yes. This is a book of donut recipes. But not recipes to make donuts. Recipes on how to use donuts. Recipes that try to disguise donuts as real food. For example, check out the Crumbled Donuts above, where it claims that donuts have the same nutritional value as a bowl of cereal. And it is obvious that nutritional value is important to the creators of this book. Check out the three big fat sausages next to the donut french toast above.

But I do have one small disclaimer. Apparently, donuts made back in 1947 were a little different than the donuts we have today. They didn't have sickly sweet commercial frostings or fillings. They appear to be plain, dry cake donuts. So, some of these things might not be so horrible. But still...the Donut Rarebit above is still truly disgusting.


Donut Prune Salad. With cottage cheese in it. Do I even need to say it?


Thank god. At the end the book the recipes come back to sanity, giving us a picture of donuts that I am comfortable with.

Donut Prune Salad....uhhhhh...so gross....

Vintage Fun

My parents recently dumped about ten or twenty boxes of papers and photographs from my grandparent's estate at my house. As I started going through it, I realized that a lot of it was actually very interesting; some funny, some cute, and some of it just plain scary. I thought I would share things that really caught my interest, as a little homage to my grandparents. I appreciate any thoughts and feedback!