Allee Willis Blog » Products

10Feb 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1960’s Ponds Cold Cream

10Feb 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1960’s Ponds Cold Cream

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Seeing as the Lustrous Lipstick display was so popular yesterday I moved my vintage Ponds face cream up in KOTD status to grace the shelves at The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch today. Along with Jergens, Ponds ruled the middle class moisturizer market in the 1950’s, 60’s and 70’s. Growing up, I don’t ever recall going into a friend’s house whose mom didn’t have a jar of this stashed next to the cotton balls.

Made by Chesebrough-Pond’s Inc., NY,NY this is the 10.4 oz. economy jar, the product’s most popular size. Pond’s famous Seven Day Beauty Plan included slathering this stuff on twice nightly for “smoother, lovlier” skin.

I remember stocking up on Ponds for college but then being too embarrassed to abide by the Pond’s famous Seven Day Beauty Plan for fear of having to walk my dorm around looking like this woman:

Here’s a 1960’s Ponds ad:

This commercial wasn’t for Ponds but for a competing more boutique line of facial cosmetics in the 1950s. It’s astounding to watch because of one of its secret ingredients, radioactivity!

04Feb 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1970’s “Disco Beat” Earring Holder

04Feb 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1970’s “Disco Beat” Earring Holder

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One of my favorite genres of Kitsch is when objects are produced to take advantage of a massive trend in pop culture but actually have nothing at all to do with that trend. My next favorite genre of Kitsch is when the products themselves are impractical for the use they were created to serve. This “Disco Beat” earring holder qualifies on both fronts! The bouncy, clean cut 1950’s American Bandstand bobby-soxers would have never gotten into the 1970’s disco-beated Studio 54 and the zillion holes provided to dangle earrings from makes for too crowded of a surface to effectively hang more than a couple sets of earrings without them hanging over each other and coalescing into a tangled mess. All of which makes for one hell of the fantastic Kitsch product!

I had my ears pierced when I was 16 but the pain was so excruciating I couldn’t get the image of a shaft of metal poking through flesh out of my head, reliving the experience every time I poked a cheap little gold wire through either hole. So I gave up after a few years and nothing has violated that area since. I did however have a great collection of vintage earrings, none of which fit on the Disco Beat unless I had at least a half an hour to spend trying to disengage the earrings from the holes and each other.

05Jan 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Max Factor Sophisti-Cat Perfume

05Jan 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Max Factor Sophisti-Cat Perfume

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Made from 1954 – 1960, possession of a bottle of Max Factor Sophisti-Cat perfume was de rigueur for any little girl growing up in ’50’s and ’60’s. My kitty is brown with pink rhinestone eyes, a pearl choker and a white feather that constantly gets stuck to the cardboard covered velveteen, fake suede or whatever this little pussy is made out of.

Sophisti-Cats came in a variety of colors – black, brown, purple, chartreuse, red, pink, yellow and blue that I know of, and held 1/8 ounce of either Golden Woods, Primitif or Hypnotique perfume between their paws. In her rounded hard plastic case she stands a regal 6″ tall.

My favorite thing about this apparently stray Sophisti-Cat is that the bottom part of the package is printed upside down.

28Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Vintage ‘Here They Are Looking At You’ Eyeglass Holder

28Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Vintage ‘Here They Are Looking At You’ Eyeglass Holder

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These eyeglass holders became all the rage in the 1950’s when fanciful designs transformed a lot of otherwise mundane looking products like eyeglasses and the receptacles they sat in into little gardens of kitsch. I always enjoy wearing glasses more when I pull them out of something like this.

27Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Dionne Warwick “The Psychic Within” Board Game

27Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Dionne Warwick “The Psychic Within” Board Game

dionne psychic game

With 2010 only inches away I wouldn’t mind a little psychic vision as to what the coming year will hold. Would love a few more coins dropping in the pocket, a few more hits rolling out of the brain and a whole lot more kitsch kluttering up my life.

I don’t know why I didn’t buy this board game during Warwick’s ’91-’98 run with the Psychic Friends Network. I guess the infomercial was on so frequently I just never thought it would go away. As much as I enjoyed the massive cheese wheel served up every night, I was glad it tanked as Warwick made such historic records in the 60’s and they were all but forgotten under a mountain of psychic slop. But I do wish that I had a little bit of the slop to remember this Warwick phase by, namely this board game which I will now content myself with enjoying at The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch.

This Kitschtastic item is the winner of the prestigious Classique d’ Camembert award, the highest honor bestowed upon an object submitted to The Allee Willis Museum of Kitsch at awmok.com. I thank aKitschionado Jason Mecier for his excellent and discerning taste.

22Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Stress Wiener

22Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Stress Wiener

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Everybody knows that the holidays induce stress, especially this year with the economy still sitting out on the sidelines. So just in time comes the Stress Wiener, “the squeezable food to improve your mood”. If I were the gambling type, I’d lay odds that this was a repackaged dog toy that came from the factory minus a squeaker. Whatever the case, I’m squeezing it hard with only three days left til blast-off.

21Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – ‘I Love Lucy’ Phillip Morris Christmas Gift Cigarettes

21Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – ‘I Love Lucy’ Phillip Morris Christmas Gift Cigarettes

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It says a lot about the Atomic Age that America’s pre-Kennedy First Family, the Ricardo’s, hawked cigarettes for the holidays. Now we know why Lucy’s voice was lower than James Earl Jones’ as she progressed through the years most likely puffing on her lifetime supply of Phillip Morris.

17Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Better Than Flex-Straws: Vintage Flav-r Straws!

17Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Better Than Flex-Straws: Vintage Flav-r Straws!

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The next revolution in sucking power after the Flex-Straw was this product that I made my mother stockpile so I’d never have less than a month’s supply. Though chocolate and strawberry were my favorite flavors, the success of mixing the flavor with the liquid you were drinking depended on the sucking power of your cheek muscles as the granules or whatever it was inside – some people remember it as a chemically soaked felt strip – oftentimes clumped leaving one with no other choice but to rip the straw open and dab bits on your tongue as you drank. Whatever the contents, process or the amount of effort it took, I still enjoyed the personal power I felt over relieving myself of the tedium of milk.

16Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Vintage Flex-Straws

16Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Vintage Flex-Straws

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I can’t tell you how many Flex-straws I went through as a kid seeing how far I could bend them before the passage of liquid was no longer possible. Coming in “gay pastel colors”, I used to drink out of the salmon and pink ones and used the other colors to make necklaces, form the outline of a baseball field for my marbles and other such childhood crafts and frivolities.

I love the box as much as the straws. The color scheme is fantastic and phrases like “perfect for use in the new soft drink can!” make this a ticking timepiece for the Atomic Age.

According to Wikipedia, the inventor, Joseph Friedman, “observed his young daughter Judith at the counter, struggling to drink out of a straight straw. He took a paper straight straw, inserted a screw and using dental floss, he wrapped the paper into the screw threads, creating corrugations. After removing the screw, the altered paper straw would bend conveniently over the edge of the glass, allowing small children to better reach their beverages.”

01Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Bubble Gum Dental Floss

01Dec 2009

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Bubble Gum Dental Floss

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There’s nothing more I’d like to pull through my teeth than long strands of Double Bubble but this barely bubblegum flavored dental floss is as close as I’m ever going to get. It always amazes me that things like bubblegum, bacon, french fries and other foodstuffs that are not necessarily a tooth’s best friend are the products that are made to nurture it. One of the most fascinating things about this, though, is how they arrived at a price of 78 cents. Was 75 too convenient and 80 too round?

This dental floss meal was prepared by Oral Care and manufactured in Québec by Innovadent Technologies.