amylsacks' photos

Nice mystic eye effect in the middle there. From the October issue of Everywoman's magazine.

You see, Children, back before we had cellphones to tell us the time, we had these... Clipped from the pages of National Geographic magazine.

Was this product cross-marketed with the Grapefruit Diet? Seems like a logical pairing, kind of.

I'm not sure what it is about chili sauce that would bring to mind "canning-time." Maybe it was a Baltimore thing. Anyone?

...But inevitably, the marketers needed to fill a whole bunch of space. So you get disturbing concepts like "luncheon meat" flavored with grape syrup.

These don't sound so bad, do they? They were kind of meant to be used like we use Italian soda syrups nowadays...

Fly, my fruity minions! Fly! Front and inside section of a fold-out published by Recipe Foods, Inc., Baltimore, Maryland.

Clipped from the October issue of Everywoman's magazine.

"Prints available only in states where legal." [cue dramatic music] Imagine if you were the poor slob caught smuggling Impressionist posters across the state border in the dead of night! [shudder] From the December issue of Sunset magazine.

Save up to 25 cents! And spend it on a background that your china won't blend in with. From the October issue of Everywoman's magazine.

Sent from "Archangel, region 113, USSR, zone 16." Shown slightly larger than original size.

You say "Creepy", I say "Cry-Pie" Let's call the whole thing off... From the October issue of Everywoman's magazine.

In case you heathens still don't grasp the mountainous purple majesty of prunes and their ilk, here's one last recap. Enjoy!

The bread pudding above has quite a hypnotic gaze. The pie below seems harmless enough, though. Sorry I ran out of room for the lecture about prune juice. However, its packaging is a masterpiece of design. It'd be easy to pretend that your daily glass of "helper" was fine cognac, so long as you kept the bottle in view while sipping.

Dig the state-of-the-art stemware and ignore the rest. That would be my advice.

Food as ladies church hats. Or vice versa. The Surrealists (if any were still around) and Borscht Belt comedians alike were shouting with glee when they got to these pages.

Here, we definitely enter into the realm of Trying Way Too Damn Hard. Prune Ham Rolls (l): Deep-fried rolls of boiled ham, prunes, and ketchup, coated in eggs, milk and white bread crumbs. Yikes. Veal "Birds" (upper right) were disturbingly contorted fried-then-boiled (!!) pieces of veal steak got up to resemble chicken. Because chicken was more expensive and/or harder to get back then and apparently you couldn't just give up and eat beans and rice like the rest of the world.. The "Jack Horner Fritters..." Oh, Dear God. You don't want to know. Let's just move on, quick!

I don't know about "Prune Pie Majestic," though its presentation is impeccable. As for "Prune Devils, well... As late as the 1950s, Stan Freberg was still explaining to execs at Sunsweet that "Gentlemen, Gentlemen, we're a long way from prune hors d'ouevres."