Aspiration

Whilst "researching" my recent post on the Morris Minor (1948-1971) I came across a trio of contemporary adverts. They didn't seem to fit with that post, but they were so delicious I thought you deserved to see them.


There's something almost innocent and wholesome about 1950s advertising imagery. The aspirational element is definitely there, but it's done lightly.


By the 1960s, the lifestyle stuff is much more overt, much less subtle (although maybe by then so many Moggies had been sold that everyone knew the brand -- you could concentrate on selling the emotion around it).


Look at the masterly way he appears to be dominating her, bending her over the bonnet to give her a good seeing-to. An alternative reading is that she's cringing away from his overbearing manner and, in those pre-deoderant days, overwhelming body odour.

Incidentally, I love the precision of that price: £515, six shillings and thruppence (in modern money, £515 and 32p).

I want one. Again.