1/4/10

The Hall of Heads, Pt.2


Disembodied Floating Heads. Round two. FIGHT! Frank Sprayberry is up to his old tricks again with the radio and TV training ads.

Sadly, by 1957, he had stopped trying to coin the phrase "electronician", and just calls himself a "radio-television serviceman". Boo, Sprayberry. Boo! That's less funny! Also, he's decided to try and smile for the camera. Boo again. Disembodied Floating Heads are supposed to be creepy. Ask anyone. He's still cutting out his neck, so he gets some style points there, and at least his smile is crooked and his teeth are sort of snaggley. Better still if he just used the stern glare from his earlier ad. He feels like he's slipping. I do like his use of unnecessary hyphens in "no-obligation" and "no-risk". He still knows how to write copy.











But then there's J.E. Smith. Bam! Out of nowhere. No, wait. Out of the past. 1945! Nice attack! Sprayberry didn't see that one coming!





Hmm. he left his neck attached to his head. That's disembodied, but just barely. You can tell he's new. He does understand not to smile though. Nice smirk, Smith.

If you look at the lower right corner of his ad (click the image for bigger version), you can see his catalog features nothing but DFH's on the cover. Nice style!










And look! He's brought backup. He's got a posse of six DFH's behind him. Six television electronics apostles, including...


Sixty Dollar Al


 Norman "Beaker" Miller


and Ferdinand "Hair Tumor" Zirbel

Know what though? Quantity doesn't trump quality. Smith has energy, but so far Sprayberry's got the experience and weirdness to stay on top. I look forward to seeing more from you, J. E. Smith, but today, Sprayberry holds the title. Ding!
 

2 comments:

Steve Miller said...

Have you Google-mapped Sprayberry's address yet?

Nice typo in the first line of Smith's reply coupon, BTW.

PhilAreGo@gmail.com said...

You mean The Galleria De Absurde? I'm just glad to see that Sprayberry's head wasn't staring back at me, floating in the Streetview window.

[-Mgmt.]

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