Thursday, March 6, 2014

Novelty Mart, Dept. 63

A full-page NOVELTY MART ad from a 1950's comic book is too good to not share without giving it the BLOWN UP treatment. Seriously, all of the expertly illustrated images below are featured in one ad, but everything is so small in print you kind of miss the beauty of it all, (not to mention the eye strain trying to read the text.) As I did with the last post, I've separated the images for maximum WOW Factor! You know you want Sandy with her wavy red hair and rubber wonderskin! And who wouldn't wanna knock the block off'a "Kid Puncho!" And that's only the beginning: remote control cars, electric film projectors, and a Blondie that coos! And jeezo, look'it those prices! Which one shall they send you? Or maybe you'll just take them all?







9 comments:

Craftypants Carol said...

oh i love this whole thing so much! i freaking love the name of the company!!! i wonder what it was like inside the offices of Novelty Mart Dept 63!!!! man!

my fave thing is totally the film projector (which looks a lot more like a view master projector to me) - but i love Kid Puncho too! although i dont quite understand how he would make a good wrestling partner.

man if i could go back in time the first thing i'd do is go straight to the Novelty Mart Dept 63!

Chris Sobieniak said...

The Sandy doll looks like it's giving us the finger!

Mr. Karswell said...

>man if i could go back in time the first thing i'd do is go straight to the Novelty Mart Dept 63!

I wonder what Dept's 1 - 62 were like?

>The Sandy doll looks like it's giving us the finger!

I've never been able to decipher what's going on in the circle above her head

Craftypants Carol said...

well it says Free Hair Wave Kit! next to it and i could tell that big black thing in front was a comb and i thought maybe the pink think was a bottle of wave lotion and the long skinny things were permanent rollers??? but maybe i was just living in my own fantasy world for a minute there. and it kinda looks like the blue square is the box that it all come in with her pic on it. that's my take anyways.

Mr. Karswell said...

Sounds better than what I thought. I thought she was dreaming about that time she put together a shelving unit from IKEA in the garage.

Craftypants Carol said...

oh yeah! that's why she looks so crabby

Chris Sobieniak said...

I could believe that!

Mr. Cavin said...

I know that projector is supposed to be bright red plastic, but it looks kind of green after all this time. So I think you should open the whole ad page in Photoshop and adjust the hue till that projector is bright red. Then we'll see if that little doll is really a blond for starters.

JMR777 said...

It seems like comic books and cheap merchandise sold through the mail went hand in hand back then.
I'm surprised no one at Department 63 tried to pass the redhead as Baby Lucy to cash in on the "I love Lucy" craze of the fifties.

"Department 63 of Area 51" an Ed Wood movie that was never made but should have been.....