Magic Sauce Cubes

The dogs do not want to discover this new taste. They may want to cover it, though. In the backyard, where it will not bother anyone ever again.

Even the disembodied head on the box looks skeptical. It is not even looking at the Magic Sauce Cubes. No one wants to.

And no one will thank you for this: not your dog, not the people you live with who have to look at this, and certainly not the cat (she's just glad she doesn't have to get involved). And naturally, you won't like it either. Imagine having to perform culinary magic with these horrible cubes! It "releases its own delicious sauce - like magic." No, just no.

Do you get the impression that this product was fairly short-lived?

[From Life, November 16, 1962.]

Hopalong Casualty

Yes, you too can be "a Spaceman or Hopalong Casually." How casual is this, to be bouncing along the sidewalk in your Space Shoes? It will soon be followed by your casually falling on your face.

These mini-surfboard-and-springs devices are strapped to your regular shoes and will keep you hopping for the proverbial "hours of fun."

I've always wondered, precisely how many hours are "hours of fun"? I think it probably translates to "about five minutes or less."

Please note that all you fun-loving Canadians will have to shell out $2.75 instead of $1.98. That's just the way it is. Too bad they can't just lob them over the border - I'm sure they are springy enough.

I would guess that the Space Shoes ad is from the 1960s. In the 1960s, Murray's in New York made "sensible" shoes called Space Shoes (I didn't find a picture, but I'll bet you can imagine them) - and then there were these exquisite Outer Space Shoes from 1973. To go with the Lesiure Spacesuit, no doubt (medallions not included).

I have no idea why they are called Outer Space Shoes. Maybe that's the only place you'd be in fashion when you wore them. Those white ones with the buckles in particular.

Many thanks to tomheroes for the springy Space Shoes ad. The Outer Space Shoes are from The Rotarian, April 1973.

The Slumber Helmet

Last Friday I found a copy of the Woman's Journal, an English magazine, from 1937, for only a couple of dollars. It was up on a really tall shelf and it took me about an hour to get it down without having the whole entire floor-to-almost-the-ceiling bookcase fall over on me. But there were no step stools in the place. They did have the ladders that are attached to old tall bookcases (like they always have in English country house libraries in Agatha Christie novels) but this bookcase didn't have a ladder. And there were no tall people to ask to get it down. Anyway, I did get it down without ruining the bookstore or my cranium so hurray.

There are tons of wonderful ADS! in there but it is a big magazine and my scanner is small and frightened of large items. So...what I can do is scan some of the little ads. Here is one of my favorites:

Behold, the Ladye Jayne Slumber Helmet! That extra 'e' on the end of 'Lady' makes it so much more elegant, don't you think?

The words "Slumber" and "Helmet' do not go together. At all. Thus, the Ladye Jayne ensures that you will be very uncomfortable trying to get to sleep. Because it is a bathing cap, pretty much. A tight bathing cap that you stuff your permanent-waved head into every night so that you will be gorgeous in the morning.

I'd almost rather have a few books fall on me than wear this.