Tuesday, January 29, 2008

In Space No One Can Hear You Cough




Well, I guess I was naughty or something. I previously posted an entry to point out the relationship of early U.S. moon missions to products used in space and advertised heavily by their manufacturers. A few days after I posted this brief piece, however, I was somewhat aghast to find that somebody (affiliated with Blogger, I assume) removed both visuals accompanying the entry.

The visuals were scans of an early seventies ad for a popular antihistamine, a brochure commonly sent to doctors and public institutions all over the world. It was MEANT to be seen by anybody and everybody, so as hard as I try to respect copyrights on this blog, I have to say -- I don't believe this material was beyond display here. Like flashers in raincoats (to put it crudely), corporations print these advertisements in order to show us what they've got.

In any event, the entry text itself remained intact here, but I pulled it. In return, I'm posting this with just appropriate snippets of the advertisement shown, without any reference to the product itself. Frankly, I believe the pharmaceutical company would welcome the ad's display in terms of historical significance, but I suspect that Blogger/Google felt I overstepped their policies in some way unrecognized by me, and I'm only sorry that I can't share this very relevant bit of non-UFO nostalgia with my readers in full. The moon/space references are of interest because the late sixties and early seventies (this ad was from 1971) marked a whole new era in the history of exploration -- whether in space or amongst Madison Avenue's ad personnel.