11/26/14

Westclox 1958 - Seasonal American Retail Atrocity Meelee Event option.

Two days from now is Seasonal American Retail Atrocity Meelee Event, our nation's proudest moment. I hope your special shopping cuirass and pauldrons are nicely decorated for the holidays. For those of you who lack the bloodlust for S.A.R.A.M.E., we bring you a Christmas shopping option. But first, enjoy some kooky mid-century typography and whimsical design, courtesy of our lovable, innocent pal, The Fifties.

Westclox manufactured a crap-ton of clocks over the decades, and apparently they made them pretty well. I have a little one in the kitchen in a kind of atomic style, that kind of looks like a bullet, or the nose cone of a rocket. It still works, and I think I paid $32 for it in an antique store. I should post a picture of it when I get home.

As more and more civilized humans are finding out, doing your Christmas shopping online is a fine way to get your shit done faster, easier, with no expended car-juice, and with a greatly reduced risk of getting your teeth knock out by a retail Visigoth. Why not hunker in your bunker checking out the offerings on Popular Auction Site? "What!?", you shout. "Give people old junk as a gift? What are you? Kidding me?" you say. Well, you have to choose the right person and put a little thought into it, but I have yet to have it come off as cheap or thoughtless. If you think about it, even an affordable desk clock is rarer than anything still in production. Plus, things were built better years ago, and from better materials, more often than not. Finding an antique for somebody takes a little more thought than  simply scooping stuff off the shelves of Target and into your cart. Plus, you can spend a lot of money on antiques, if you really really want to. A couple years ago, (in addition to a nice new present), I gave my sister a few nancy drew books and an old issue of Tiger Beat magazine with Saun Cassidy in it, whom she had a massive crush on when she was young. She got a huge laugh out of it.

Let's see if Popular Auction Site can find any of the little beauties from this Westclox ad...






Wow, there they are - all except for that square Andover model. I found a clock matcing that description, but it didn't look like the one in the ad. Whatever. Of course, the super cheap auctions generally mean the unit isn't working, but lots of them do seem to run. I won't bother posting links to these auctions, because, if my understanding of the linearity of time holds true, these auctions will be gone in a week or so. However, there are always more.

Or, you can go play some Brockian Ultra Cricket, go shopping like anormal person. If you survive, thanks for reading!




1 comments:

Michelle_Randy said...

This is a great idea. My husband is mad, mad I tell you, about clocks (watches specifically), but would probably love an antique clock to sit on his desk at work.

Rosalind Russell is the star of one of my favorite films, Auntie Mame.
--MrsBug (now with Google!)

Post a Comment