Multiple Electric Vibrator (Scalp massager)
Head massages feel awesome, and no one can deny that. But would you ever strap an electric vibrating massager to your scalp? The “Multiple Electric Vibrator” uses 480 little nubs to rub your scalp, stimulating blood flow and supposedly ridding you of dandruff and loose hair. Shake it up!
Egg Cuber
What kind of a chicken lays a square egg? This nifty, easy to use egg cuber was designed to transform a round, hardboiled egg into a square egg.
Horse Exercise Machine
A vibrating horse? Now that's kinky. As the ad suggests, you can proudly display this 3-foot vibrator in your home under the pretenses that it is an exercise machine. But really, the hidden meaning of that second bullet point is the one and only reason to buy this product: “It invigorates the system by bringing all the vital organs into inspiriting action.” Oh yeah, and it's also listed as a cure for hysteria, which was often diagnosed in women during this time. And what was the preferred medical treatment for female hysteria? Orgasms.
Sanitized Tape Worms
The banner of this pre-war advertisement poster, promising to banish fat without fancy diets or exercise could come from any age. However, today's consumers might find the recommended remedy a little harder to swallow. There are few who would seriously contemplate adding "sanitized tape worms" to the breakfast menu. Yet the thought of sharing meals with a thriving colony of "friends for a fair form", it appears, was not enough to dissuade the health conscious of the 1930s, who paid up in multitudes for this product. The mechanism was that after swallowing the parasites, they'd nest in your gut and feed off digesting food. Yummy!
Cook And Wash on your Refrigerator!
In 1952, this was a great idea: COOK and WASH on your REFRIGERATOR! Complete kitchen in 5 sq. ft. Combines refrigerator, sink, 3 gas burners and storage drawer. Available with electric burners. And with your wife's two clones helping, kitchen productivity will be increased immeasurably!
Interchangeable Handles
It was a great idea in 1953. But if they advertised it today, they'd need to change the ad copy. Here's how it works… When you buy a Caloric Gas Range, you select the handle color that matches your kitchen. Then, a few years down the road, you change the color scheme of your kitchen. Just go back to the store and discover that they stopped making that model, and colored handles are no longer available.
Radium Suppositories
Produced by the Home Products Company of Denver, Colorado, these radioactive suppositories made men believe that they could be transformed from ‘weak, discouraged men' into strong, heroic males that would ‘bubble over with joyous vitality'. Amazingly, this wasn't all though; soluble radium was added into a cocoa butter base that was in the form of a suppository. This was then supposed to be fitted into the rectum in order to stimulate “the weakened organs that needed its vitalizing aid.'
Menstrual cup Tassette
Probably the first modern American cup (there are patents for foreign cups about as old or older) appeared in the 1930s - this cup, Tassette, in its earliest incarnation. It might have evolved into a more acceptable product nowadays but back then women did not like the cup because it was hard, too heavy, and simply because they did not want to put things into their vaginas with their fingers.
Solar Bath Apparatus
What better cure for the common head cold than a healthy dose of radiation? This scary-looking apparatus enclosed the head in a metal drum and doused it with ultra-violet rays. The Solar Bath Apparatus was meant to clear up catarrh of the ears, nose and throat, along with other head-related illnesses.
Wonder Sauna Hot Pants
Now you may be asking yourself when did American consumer culture reach the point of no return? I think I have an answer: sometime in the '70s, when the Wonder Sauna Hot Pants were first offered to the public. Too lazy to work out? Can't afford a tummy tuck? We've got you covered! Try a pair of these fabulous Wonder Sauna Hot Pants! One size fits all… Oh, did I mention they are inflatable?
