Fake Grotesque Print Ads

At Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog, we have found that many of the cheesiest of cheesy retro print ads are not actually real. The above ad for celery is a very clever fake from Jack Pollock's 1994 Devil Chef comic book. The following looks like an actual print ad from the Soda Pop Corporation of America, but one wonders. . . Cola for babies? Are you kidding? Really?



There have been so many fabricated 1950's style print advertisements that Go Retro actually devoted a post to Vintage Ads: Real...Or a Really Good Fake? Here's a fake one that fooled us!



A surefire way to earn emphatic, appalled and mortified thumbs-downs from many movie blog organizations is not just to veer off from the silver screen beat into music, comedy and other various n' sundry topics, but by forgetting all about movies and posting cheesy print ads instead.



The usual gang of idiots at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog thought those wildly inappropriate (even by 1950's standards) Griffin Microsheen print ads which promoted an unsexy product, shoe polish, via ample cleavage were fakes. They're not - these ads were real and very likely successfully sold gallons of the stuff to lecherous guys who inhabited The Heartbreak Hotel wearing shiny shoes.



An actor not exactly shy with starlets and fashion models who promoted Griffin Microsheen Shoe Polish and other products, Mickey Rooney tried all kinds of wacky business ideas. Did Mickey actually own a chain of spud-laden "Potato Fantasy" restaurants?



We at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog thought the Mickey Rooney's Potato Fantasy print ad was fake, a ruse and that the restaurant did not actually exist. . . Potato Fantasy? REALLY? No Tipping Allowed?? Don't know who created the above ad, which we thought was a parody, but it is, in fact, not far afield from other businesses Mickey launched over the years. While wondering what the heck besides spuds were ingredients in a "potato shake," we note that Mickey Rooney's Star-B-Q and Weenie World, indeed, were actual ventures.



But. . . according to the following article from the Los Angeles Herald Examiner, there was a fire that destroyed a Mickey Rooney's Potato Fantasy restaurant! So, did at least briefly, a Mickey Rooney's Potato Fantasy restaurant exist (albeit without the success of Minnie Pearl's Chicken)? Read the following article; it is stranger than fiction, and since the Herald Examiner correspondent's name is Otto Pinkpig, it's extremely likely this reportage IS FICTION - and that there never was a Mickey Rooney's Potato Fantasy restaurant to begin with. That said, the question remains, were we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog fooled by this bogus story (and at least briefly by the Potato Fantasy ad)? Until we noted the name of the author, yes!



And, speaking of potatoes, the following 1950 style ad was actually a very clever hoax, which we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog fell for! Don't know who did the clever Photoshop work to create this Potato Fudge ad (one suspect would be graphic artist and king of fake retro ads Cris Shapan), but, alas, there was no such product as Kraft's Potato Fudge - and it's just as well.



Thus far, Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog has not found any cheesy print ads for any of Mickey Rooney's various restaurants . . . well, not yet.