So on The Skwib (Mark A. Rayner's irregular and explosive weblog) there's a contest for taking a vintage ad and photoshopping (Paint Shop Pro-ing) it into a science fiction product (I found the contest via BoingBoing). I'll let you see my entry before I explain it for those (I'm looking at you, Steve) who can guess the origin.
Ready? Hired Girl was an automated cleaner "invented" by Robert Heinlein for his novel The Door Into Summer. This was one of the first Heinlein novels that I read and that led me to being a lifelong Heinlein fan. The original ad was for an Electrolux vacuum cleaner. What I find mildly interesting is that the Electrolux ad, like my Hired Girl ad, didn't splash the name Electrolux in huge letters. Where you see Hired Girl is where Electrolux used to be. Maybe at that time Electrolux was such a big brand that they could downplay the name.
3 comments:
Congrats on being our first Heinlein entry!
I got it! And thanks once again for turning me onto Heinlein way back when.
Funny thing is, I forgot about Hired Girl being a product in the book. When I was looking for vintage ads I was trying to find something for Flexible Frank or Drafting Dan. When I didn't find any ads I liked I finally cracked open the book to look for other products mentioned, like the auto-light cigarette, and saw Hired Girl mentioned.
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