I recently posted some old-school-ridiculous ads from vintage Playboy magazines here and thought “Why not make this a regular thing?”, so today I present to you more vintage Playboy ads. This time, we’re setting the time machine’s controls to take us back to March 1977.

Wrangler really tried to step back from that rugged cowboy image in favor of something more “Warren Beatty and Faye Dunaway’s Bonnie and Clyde Meets Captain Fantastic”. Incidentally, 350 Fifth Avenue is the Empire State Building, but, alas, Wrangler has moved their headquarters to Greensboro, NC since this ad ran. Also, the slogan “Wremember, the ‘W’ is Silent”?

Gross. Nothing, in my mind, says “1970s Venereal Disease Vector” quite like these wooden hot tubs. Or, as I call them, “The Devil’s Chowder”.

 

I knew that ITT had scammed a lot of gullible people via their tech schools and that they’d overthrown the government of Chile, but I didn’t know that they made camera flashes. So, there, I learned something new today.

“Panasonic says you should violate FCC regulations”

Stop! Your creepy smoker’s eyes are staring into my soul!

 

People kid themselves when they say “I only read Playboy for the articles”, so I’m going to modify that a bit and say “I only read vintage Playboys for the ads”. 

I recently came across a trove of vintage issues of Playboys and its been fun to flip through them and appreciate the ridiculousness of the ads more than anything else (though I must admit that the “boomer humor” comics occasionally elicit a groan from me, when they’re not making me cringe).

So, today, I present to you, some weird/ridiculous/strange/whatever ads from the August 1979 issue of Playboy.

A full 42 years before Apple introduced Spatial Audio, Bose was giving it to us via this fake-wood-grained box.

From back in the day when Canadian Mist (which I admit to occasionally drinking) came in a glass bottle, and not the plastic bottles that it comes in now.

I’m sorry, but I’m not drinking something called “Dry Sack”. And to be juvenile, I feel like this might be related to the two different jock itch ads in the issue:

The reverend should’ve stuck with VW. Also, I can’t imagine that the good reverend would be pleased to know he appeared in Playboy.

“Row on row of precision gauges”…”husky” wheels…”12,000-mile/12-month warranty”. The AMX had it all!

If you drink too much Canadian Mist or…um…”Dry Sack”, you too could be an olive-dropper!

Who is this Bruce Jenner you speak of?

Hope you like film grain.

When you’re finished shooting your grainy photos on your Minolta, take your film down to the Fotomat in the parking lot at the Woolworths! In a week or so, return to pick up your prints and prepare to be disappointed.