Another set of nature themed cards from Brooke Bond was released in 1958 and was devoted to British Wild Life. This complete set is in an original album and in decent condition.
Category: Other
DGF2099 Productions-Introduction to Tea Card Albums-Australia- Lyons Tea-1956
Released by Lyons tea in 1956, this set is devoted to the history of Australia. This set is worse for wear, with several pages missing, damage to the pages that remain, and the Australian flag card mounted upside down.
Copywritten Logos and Products in Rifftrax, Part 1
By David G. Firestone
I’ve done Benny Hill, Beavis and Butt-Head, Team Fortress 2, now I’m gonna take on my biggest project yet…Rifftrax Shorts! Anyone who watches Mystery Science Theater 3000 should watch Rifftrax. It’s Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy (Tom Servo), and Bill Corbitt (Crow T. Robot) riff movies from Hollywood blockbusters to B movies, to my favorite genre, educational shorts. This is going to be a long one, so we’ll do titles from A to D. There is a lot of trademarked logos and characters in these shorts, so let’s find the best.
The first short is called “Alcohol Trigger Films.” The full title is “Alcohol Trigger Films for Junior High School: The Party, the Mother, the Ride.” It was produced in 1979 by AAA. The point of this film is to encourage discussion among the classes it was shown to. The first scene, The Party, starts with kids buying beer in front of a delicatessen. 
The sign for the delicatessen has a large Coca Cola logo on the side. During the film the middle school aged kids move to under the sign to drink without getting caught for the cops.
A diversity film from the same period, Are All People The Same talks about how people are different and why that’s a good thing. During the film, about 2/3 of the way through, we see this dejected looking young kid, wearing an Oakland A’s hat, where the patch has been added on a square piece of fabric. 
That same short features footage from a Phoenix Suns/Golden State Warriors game, with a beautiful uniform match-up.
The At Your Fingertips series teaches kids how to make toys and other art projects using every day object. Rifftrax made fun of four of them so far, Boxes, Cylinders, Grasses, and Play Clay. The boxes short features a series of boxes with trademarked logos on them. 
At one point, a kid makes a face toy out of old toothpaste boxes, because who doesn’t have them lying around. They used a vintage Crest box, with a really good vintage logo.
Play Clay shows how to make your own clay using Gold Medal flour.
Grasses didn’t have any trademarked logos, nor did it answer the question “Is corn grass”
Basic Job Skills is a series devoted to various aspects of getting and keeping a job. One episode is about dealing with customers, and is aptly named “Dealing with Customers.” One of the people in the film works at a motorcycle dealership, and talks about the various types of motorcycles. To illustrate this, the various kinds of motorcycles are shown being used, including a trip to Burger King, with a logo clearly visible in the background. Man I love that logo.
Beginning Responsibility is a 1980’s series aimed at elementary school students about various ways to be responsible. Many of these involve creepy methods, including inanimate objects talking and moving around. Broken Bookshop features a man who fixes broken books for a living, and the books are sentient, and tell the stories about how they weren’t well taken care of. One of the books who is yet to be repaired tries to escape in an old Hires Root Beer crate, 
with a logo still visible. In Taking Care of Your Own Things, the main character Reggie is so bad at taking care of his things, they gain sentience and revolt. Like most kids of that era, he had a series of Marvel Comics posters in his room.
Billy’s Helicopter Ride is from the 1960’s and features a young boy named Billy who goes for a ride in his uncle’s helicopter. There were a couple of things that struck me. The film is obviously set in Dallas, and at one point they fly over Dealy Plaza and don’t acknowledge it, 
and then they land on the old Southland Life Building, now the Sheraton Dallas Hotel.
The Clean Club is from 1990. Where do I start with this? I think that of all the Rifftrax shorts, this one has the most copyright violations of all. The three germ characters in clay-mation style are introduced in the beginning. They live in the girl’s hair, because she doesn’t wash herself at all. In her first appearance, the girl is clearly wearing an AYSO shirt. 
The second story features a young boy with a Disney poster in the background, 
and who starts reading Highlights. 
He is so dirty, his clothes and toys gain sentience and rebel. The boy eventually agrees to take better care of his things, and his toys, including Felix the Cat, Fivel, 
The Stay Puff Marshmallow Man, 
and numerous examples of He-Man, California Raisins and other toys can be seen putting themselves away. 
The girl then gets ready to go to bed, and her toiletries revolt. A Tom’s Toothpaste tube starts yelling at her,
along with a Johnson’s Baby Shampoo bottle. 
She is established as a huge baseball fan, evidenced by her Yankees jersey, 
Dodgers poster, and Mets clock.
Clean and Neat with Harv and Marv is in the same reasoning as The Clean Club, but the only visible logos are an LA Rams helmet and an LA Dodgers cap.
Sylvester and Tweety Bird also make cameos, in a background poster.
Cooks and Chefs shows all the career opportunities in culinary jobs. They show a number of vintage restaurant signs, which all look really cool. 
They also show a vintage cruise ship logo, though I’m not sure who it belongs to,
I’m thinking it might be Cunard. Then they show Ken’s Steak House, and their vintage sign, again it looks really good.
Cork, Crashes and Curiosities is an Irish auto racing short from 1945 that shows many forms of vintage racing. During the Irish Grand Prix, a series of advertisements for something called Irish Sweep, with apparently is a lottery, are shown throughout the short.
The Creeps Machine is a short devoted to fear, namely how fear can often be unfounded in many situations. One example focuses on the dark, and features two kids trying to sleep in a dark room with a windstorm blowing outside. For reasons not fully explained, a vintage stuffed Ronald McDonald can be seen over the boy’s bed. 
As the camera starts panning across the room, Mickey Mouse appears, having been painted on the wall! That’s playing with fire when it comes to copyright.
Damaged Goods is a late 1960’s short where four friends go cruising, go to a strip club, and then go to a brothel, where at least one of them gets syphilis. At one point, the happy go lucky member of the group starts messing with a sign outside the strip club, where there is a Miller High Life sign in the window behind him.
From the early 1970’s comes The Day I Died which is about a high school kid who drinks, drives, kills himself in a car accident, and get buried, but his spirit is still on earth, begging for a second chance. His friend sneaks the booze onto the beach in a 7Up bottle.
One of the most horribly written shorts in Rifftrax is Drugs Are Like That. Produced in 1969, it features two kids playing with Legos, and discussing various things drugs are like. Many of these comparisons are nonsensical at best, and some are just laughable. The only trademark is a Lego box that the kids pour empty to start the short.
Next time, we will continue this discussion, with E-M, until then, see you soon.
The Driver Suit Blog-My Thoughts on Non Sensical Advertising
By David G. Firestone
Sunoco is the official fuel of NASCAR, IndyCar and the NHRA. They’ve started doing a series of commercials based of perfume commercials. The perfume is called “Burnt Rubber” with a bit of a French accent to it. The website, Essence of Racing shows commercials and quotes about Burnt Rubber.
It’s meant to be a joke, but can I ask a real question? Why are perfume and cologne commercials so messed up? Is there some law stating that perfume commercials need to have needless symbolism, and artsy camera angles? Take this example, from a Chanel commercial. What in the world does any of this have to do with cologne? One commercial that I have grown to loath is this White Diamonds ad that I must have seen a million times in the 1990’s. Watch both of them, and then ask yourself the following question: This makes me want to buy this perfume…WHY?
A commercial should tell you that is is our product, and this is why you should buy it. Why would Elizabeth Taylor walking into a high stakes card game in the 1950’s make me want to buy perfume? Why would a series of nonsensical, non-connected scenes make me want to buy cologne? Most importantly, why would you make a commercial where the actors AREN’T USING THE PRODUCT? At the very least, imply that your product is being used in the commercial! Watch the Liz Taylor commercial again, and tell me specifically, where it is implied that she, or anyone else in the commercial is using White Diamonds?
Could you imagine if other products were advertised like that? Imagine if you made a commercial for Coca Cola, Nike, McDonald’s, Ford, or PS4 and you don’t show the product, and don’t imply the product is being used? You would be fired, and laughed out of the industry! This hearkens back to BASF commercials, but more on that later.
I’m not sophisticated, I freely admit that. Anyone who wants to call me out by saying stuff like “you’re not sophisticated, you don’t understand…” can just shut it. I’m sick of nonsensical advertising for perfume. What scares me is that I’ve done focus groups for commercials, and every second of the 30 second commercial is studied, talked over, looked over, and not left to chance. So what that tells me is that one of two things is happening. Either these commercials are produced in-house, and given no review at all, or people are having focus groups on these, and deciding that they like them.
I mentioned BASF because their commercials in the 1990’s were even worse. Watch one here, and ask yourself this question:Based on this commercial, what does BASF do as a company? The commercial gives no information other that “We don’t make the ______,we make it _____, We don’t make a lot of the products you buy, we make a lot of the products you buy better. BASF, The spirit of innovation” That doesn’t tell me anything. I saw an updated on that ended with “BASF, The Chemical Company.” OK, now that makes sense. Is there any reason it took 20 years to add those 3 words to the commercial and make it make sense? Remember, these came out before we had access to the internet and Google, so finding this information out was much harder.
The bottom line is: advertising shouldn’t be this difficult. Tell me what your product is, and why I should buy it. Don’t over complicate commercials to the point of absurdity for the sake of artistry!
DGF2099 Productions-Introduction to Tobacco Card Albums-Dogs-W.D. & H.O. Wills-1937
Man’s best friend is represented in this Wills album from 1937. This Dogs album houses a partial set in good condition.
My Thoughts on Selfies
By David G. Firestone
It went unnoticed by many people, but at the French Open a few weeks ago, a fan jumped a barrier and ran up to Roger Federer and asked to take a selfie on the court. This obvious breach of security brings back to mind the stabbing of Monica Seles by Günter Parche in Hamburg, Germany in 1993. In both instances there was little security intervention until it was too late. While Günter Parche was a whack job, this kid created a breach of security to take a picture
With the rise of smart phones came the rise of selfies. I don’t understand this at all. This is a picture of myself, look at me! It’s just irritating. With the rise of Facebook came the rise of selfies on the internet. With this rise came the way people want to out do each other with selfies. You’ve had cases where people have shot themselves in the head, fallen of cliffs, gotten arrested, and imprisoned for trying to take selfies. IT’S NOT WORTH IT!
I get taking selfies when they are worth it, like if you are visiting somewhere significant. If you go to a concert, museum, or sporting event, and want to take a selfie and share it, I’m fine with that. If you are going out to dinner with a friend or relative you haven’t seen in a long time and want to take a selfie, that’s fine. If, on the other hand, you take seflies in line at the grocery store, or at the bus stop, then you are an idiot.
I work at a retail store, and I see this shit all the time. Why would you want to take a status while buying eggs and toilet paper? It just annoys me to no end. I hate having to deal with this kind of nonsense. There is no reason to take selfies at a store, none whatsoever. One of the reasons, I don’t go on Facebook all that much is because there are too many selfies.
The sad thing is that now, because selfies are a thing, they are only going to get bigger. I can’t see selfies going away in the foreseeable future. I can only hope they will go away, as I am getting sick of them. I don’t take them unless there is a reason for it anymore. I wish they would just go away and never come back.
DGF2099 Productions-Introduction to Tobacco Card Albums-Birds and Their Young-John Player and Sons-1937
John Player and Sons released a series concerning and named after Birds and Their Young. This full set in an album is in great condition for its age.
The Driver Suit Blog-My Thoughts on Why I HATE The Craft Beer Market.
By David G. Firestone
I’m going to say something that I guarantee will tick people off, but I don’t care. I’ve put up with this for quite some time, and I’m sick of it. I HATE the craft beer market. Yup, I said it, I hate the craft beer marker. “But Dave,” I can hear you saying, “You are a sports uniform blogger! You have to like it!” First off, no I don’t, second off, it has given birth to beer snobs. You know the kind of people I’m talking about. They only drink craft beer. They have their favorite beer, and if you don’t like that kind, you are an imbecile and a philistine.
That isn’t what beer is supposed to be! Beer is supposed to UNITE us, not divide us! The pilgrims got off the Mayflower to make a beer run! Many great leaders not only drank beer, but brewed beer. The neighborhood tavern was and is the place for people to get together after work, have a few beers, forget about the problems of life for a little while, and have a good time. The classic neighborhood get together, especially the ones in my neighborhood, always have to have beer, and there is always a lot of fun at them.
I hate the craft beer market because it took everything beer really is supposed to be, and ruined it. What I would like to say to the beer snobs is that nobody likes that attitude. I call it Lisa Simpson Syndrome. Lisa Simpson has a high IQ, is a talented musician, and is a vegetarian and as a result she thinks that it makes her better than most of the people. The problem is that this attitude makes her come across as snobby and stuck up, when she is a very likeable person. If you accept the fact that everyone has their favorite kind of beer, and they like theirs as much as you like yours, I would have no problem with the craft beer market. If there were no snobs, I would embrace the craft beer market, but due to the snobs, I can’t stand the craft beer market.
DGF2099 Productions-Introduction to Tobacco Card Albums-National Flags and Arms-John Player and Sons-1936
Issued in 1936 and considered one of the first national uses of flags in marketing, National Flags and Arms represents flags and coats of arms in 1936. This partial album set is in great condition
The Driver Suit Blog-A Funny Car Design Quirk I Never Noticed Before.
By David G. Firestone
Just a quick post, I didn’t want to rewrite the My Thoughts On article for tomorrow, so I’d just cover it today. So I committed a sin on Sunday…I fell asleep during the NHRA Lucas Oil Kansas Nationals. It was at about 1:30 in the morning, and I was tired. I had it on the DVR, so no big loss. I was watching it this afternoon, and I noticed something about funny cars I had never noticed before. It is an interesting design tick that proves that people really are paying attention to all aspects of car design, especially when it comes to sponsors.
This is an older model Ron Capps NAPA Dodge from a few years ago. Pay specific attention to the rear end of the car. 
Why in the world would those decals be diagonal? What sense does that make? It makes perfect sense. Funny cars don’t have doors or hoods, the only way to access the engine on the track is to lift the body up like so: 
Now let’s zoom in on those decals. 
Now that makes sense. Interestingly, every funny car team in the Mello Yello Drag Racing Series uses this design tick. It is pretty cool.
Come back tomorrow when I discuss how awesome the institution of pizza is!
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