The ad’s byline calls it a saddle horse substitute, and looking at the mechanism, it appears the part you sit on was sprung and could move somewhat independently of the base.

So I’m guessing, you would hold onto the handles and then move the seat back and forth a bit like a modern rocking chair perhaps? Maybe it could provide a small amount of exercise in the process. Even some upper body workout if you used primarily your arms on the handles to supply the force.

How that translates to the most important health mechanism ever produced is left as an exercise for the reader.

On top of being the most important health mechanism ever produced, this ad might be the most important example ever produced of why you should pick a font and stick with that one for a little while.

Sounds right.

In the 1960’s, a band named themselves after this guy, in homage.

A nice find!

Huh… It looks very impractical to me, if so. But then, I am not a 1960’s high society lady, and I do not know about these kinds of things. Perhaps you are right.

Very possible that Pamela, and the Tom, Dick, and Harry hand guys, are no longer with us.

1962 was 64 years ago. How old was Pamela in this photo? I am terrible at age guessing! 25? That would put her at 89 today. If 30, then 94.

Possible… but it’s well past the average lifespan for someone born in the 1930s. The average American woman born in 1935 had a 63 year life expectancy.

If Pamela was a smoker in her life, not just when posing for ads, her expected span would be shorter than that average which also included non-smokers. Only 1/3 of women were smokers in the early 1960’s. Of course we don’t know from the ad if she was a smoker, or not.

Editing my own post to add: There is also the conditional factor to consider. While a woman born in 1935 might have had a 63 LE, there was a lot of infant morality in that figure, so the LE for a woman born in 1935 who had already reached 20-some years of age, would be higher than 63.

Glad to see they were so careful to avoid any hint of objectification!

What is the blue thing she is holding? It looks like a cheerleader pom-pom, but her attire is inconsistent with that.

Never heard of that lady, but TheMovieDB lists her film parts, which were mostly uncredited bit parts such as “Girl on Meat Packers Float”.

As well as, one assumes, whatever masterpiece of American cinema resulted from this ad.

Thanks, I edited the OP with your deduction (+ credited you for).

The scenery ones are cool though! Virtual travel to see far flung places, before the internet. Plus, you got to see it in 3D.

I never even knew there was a projector, until I saw this very ad!

But whatever year it was, $11 got you the projector, the normal viewer, and 15 reels!

I have to think that we have not come very far. Today, no arsenic wafers, but an epidemic of mental health crises, and people get plastic surgery to look like distorted Instagram-filter version of themselves.

If anyone isn’t familiar with Natalie Wood, she died by drowning under mysterious circumstances involving actor Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken. Her death was initially ruled accidental, but the case was re-opened in 2011. It’s all very shady.

That seems possible.

I did some searching and there are sites that claimed the metals used in home casting kits varied, and were often an alloy of tin and lead, but could also be pure lead, pure tin, pewter alloy made without lead, or some kits would also use molten plastic.

So through history it sounds like it varied a lot as to materials.

Yeah, seems likely. Lower level but constant exposure from that, and directly into the lungs, too.

I bet this kit could vary a lot, depending on just how you played with it. Like did you have your head over the crucible inhaling fumes, or off to the side? Did you wash your hands after handling the figures and before eating food? Etc.

Naturally!

I wonder about the exposure of playing with this, and how it compared to other sources at the time, like lead paint, lead gasoline, lead pipes, etc.

tricky without the dedicated, perfectly sized anchor holes

Oh that’s too bad about the design change. I wonder if you could drill your own tiny anchor holes and restore the original method in its full effect.

I guess analog toys like this have a harder time competing for attention today than in the past.

etch-a-sketch

Morgan Freeman Narrator Voice, “In a world without diagonal lines, one child grows up to imagine we could someday make them…”

Sounds like a good guess to me. I bet it’s something like that.

I guess feeling cold doesn’t directly make you catch a cold, but it can stress your immune system, which weakens your defenses vs the virus. Maybe they had similar ideas about wet hair. Nevermind that you’d already have the virus when using the minipoo in the ad’s scenario, heh.

Haha I wondered that too! I have always showered and shampooed even with colds, and I feel like nothing grisly came of it. I was not beset by shampoo modified horror viruses.

But maybe there is a reason, and nobody told us of it.