Mother's Little Helper: 1960s Quick Carpet Fix

Ladies... Need to get those dingy carpets clean before the hubby gets home from work?

Try the Shetland Vanishing Foam Rug Shampoo Kit (complete with furniture coasters).

It's a quick fix for the busy housewife that leaves you plenty of time to get that roast in the oven!

1969 Commercial Stills: Maureen Arthur For Cheer Detergent

Here we see noted film actress Maureen Arthur (no stranger to the odd TV cameo or, as it turns out, even odder commercial) bringing her specific brand of perkiness to an ad for Cheer Detergent.  In a performance which registers somewhere between Kristin Chenoweth and Amy Sedaris on The Plucky Imp Scale, Miss Arthur plays a suburban Mom who is lamenting the less-than-vibrant tones of her children's school togs.  Frustrated and bereft of a solution, she is visited by an extraterrestrial bearing an uncanny resemblance to the vulcan Spock from the 1960s television enterprise known as Star Trek.  Through the magic of what passes for special effects in 1969, a box of All-Temp-a-Cheer materializes in a ribbon of flashing lights set upon a bed of otherworldly moog trills and (as so frequently happens) a cute white lady from the 'burbs has all of her domestic problems solved by a tall, imposing alien creature with fierce brows.

Lady With The Mazda Lamps

CLICK IMAGE FOR A CLOSER PEEK. Beautifully illustrated 1940s advertisement showing a savvy shopper with her thrifty GE Mazda Lamps. Another full-page Life Magazine find from the motherlode I acquired last year.

MURDER!

Two illustrated 1940s Black Flag ads that make insecticide look terribly empowering and glamorous.

Let's Just Ask The Ladies

Whether it's TVs, interiors, Tootsie Rolls, kitchens, foods, fashions or coffee, these gals of a certain vintage know what's what.