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|  | |  | | | Meet Mr. Product: The Art of the Advertising Character | | | | | SKU:
2150884146 | | In Stock | | Availability:
Usually ships in 1-2 business days | | Only 1 left in stock, order soon! | | | | | | Here in Meet Mr. Product youll find a vibrantly colorful tribute to such pop-culture icons as the Jolly Green Giant, natty Mr. Peanut, the cute little Morton Salt Girl, and the countless other advertising characters who have been helping us navigate the grocery aisles and choose our products for years. Offering up a bustling gallery of over 500 spokescharacters, this chunky compendium charts the origins and development of the advertising character and gives brief glimpses into some of their most intimate secrets. (Did you know that the Michelin Man has been spotted with glamorous ladies on his arm? Or that Bordens Elsie the Cow was married to Elmer of household glue fame?) Famous faces and a host of recently rediscovered characters fill Meet Mr. Products pages to bursting. | | | |
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| | Product Details | | Author: | Warren Dotz | | Paperback: | 272 pages | | Publisher: | Chronicle Books | | Publication Date: | February 01, 2003 | | Language: | English | | ISBN: | 0811835898 | | Product Length: | 6.86 inches | | Product Width: | 5.24 inches | | Product Height: | 0.95 inches | | Product Weight: | 1.13 pounds | | Package Length: | 6.6 inches | | Package Width: | 5.0 inches | | Package Height: | 1.1 inches | | Package Weight: | 1.05 pounds | | Average Customer Rating: |  based on 12 reviews |
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| | Customer Reviews | Average Customer Review: ( 12 customer reviews )
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
18 of 20 found the following review helpful:
The Big Little Book of Anthropomorphic Folk May 26, 2003
By Robin Benson
Fans of Americana and pop culture are in for a treat when they get this book. In this admittedly small (but almost an inch thick) book there are five hundred+ ad characters (actually more like seven hundred if multiples are included). Divided into eight chapters, Food, Drinks, Kids' stuff, Dining, Technology, Autos, Home and finally Personal and Leisure, they are all in color, captioned and dated. All the well-known characters are included but also many who had a regional existence, like Mr Clean-Up, the 1946 St. Louis Chamber of Commerce antilitter campaigner, or Waddle's Duckling, a 1959 icon from the Portland, Oregon restaurant.
Warren Dotz writes a short intro and explains how companies realised that these characters would bring huge concerns down to human scale, especially if they became half human and half product and always with that smiling face. A useful companion book is 'What a Character', also by the author and it shows many 'Mr Product' icons as three-dimensional figurines, thus reinforcing customer brand loyalty further.
Visually the book is a delight to look at, thanks to the design by the author and Masud Husain. Handling this kind of material is a challenge because of all the different shapes and colors but here many of the characters are whole page or four to a page and a nice touch is to show them in the context of an ad, brochure cover or a packet front. I don't think the book could look any better.
BTW: I think the paper could have been just a bit thinner for ease of handling and an index would have been useful. Oh, and I was disappointed that Mad magazine wraparound cover painting (by Norman Mingo) of issue thirty-five (October 1957) was not reproduced somewhere, it was most likely the only time that dozens of copyright ad characters where used on a magazine cover.
***FOR AN INSIDE LOOK click 'customer images' under the cover.
5 of 5 found the following review helpful:
A great compendium of retro product logos Jul 16, 2004
By Thomas Lundin
Tons of product logos here, with the bulk of them from the 30s to the 70s. These are reproduced very well, and each of them is dated and carries a two-line description of their purpose and company origin. There are a few pages of introductory front matter that summarize the history of product logos, but the meat of the book is taken up by the graphics, with anywhere from one to four logos per page. I didn't know there were so many anthropomorphic logos, among them Mr. Coffee Nerves, Mr. Dee-Lish, Mr. TV Tube, Phillips Screw Man, Johnny-One-Note, Miss My-T-Fine, Miss Fluffy Rice and Mr. Weatherball. Many of them you'll recognize, and some of them you won't, but all of them will delight you.
4 of 4 found the following review helpful:
cute book! Jun 27, 2004
By B. Erickson
"boycorrupted"
A fascinating foray into the sometimes clever, sometimes idiotic, occasionally just plain bizarre (Mr. TV Tube? Dunkie Donut-Head? Phillips Screw Man??) world of advertising characters. Anybody obsessed with kitschy pop culture, especially that of the 50's and 60's, will want this one. You get all the cartoon mascots you've ever seen on "retro" t-shirts at your local Hot Topics, plus hundreds more of varying degrees of obscurity. Indeed there was a period when designers would simply draw a smiley face on a cog and call it "Mr. Cog," and you see a lot of that here, often in hilariously weird contexts - lawn spinkler heads, pistons, the state of Nevada, a sock, all grinning amiably at you as they pitch themselves. You've got your cartoon pigs voraciously devouring pork rinds, your cigarette boxes with showgirl legs, your anthropomorphic donuts, and robots robots robots. A book like this not only takes you through a wide range of illustration styles, it hints at what life was like in those days, those "simpler times" (though it's arguable how much we've really changed). What better window into American psychology in the 20th century than the commercial devices by which we've been beguiled into consuming? Aunt Jemima has stories to tell on you.
4 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Wonderful! Oct 08, 2005
By AnotherMusicExpert
The compilers have done a wonderful job; the layouts are absolutely marvelous, a real pleasure to flip through, great retro colors used, and should be an essential addition to the collection of anyone who enjoys 50s & 60s graphics.
1 of 1 found the following review helpful:
 Comprehensive and impressive. Jul 28, 2008
By Baarbarian
I have found this collection of advertising characters indispensable as reference. A brief history of the subject matter is included and reads well. The lack of an index is perplexing, and given the occupations of its authors the cover design should have been a little more proficient. Otherwise it is well worth a look or two or three.
See all 12 customer reviews on Amazon.com
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