Consumer seduction

The book is a good example of how Taschen manages to get an extra bite of their publishing cherry. The ads for alcohol and tobacco have all appeared in their ten-volume All American Ads series. Another book, Toys with 528 pages, reproduces a hundred years of toy ads which are all in the All American Ads titles.

Of course, if you don't have the Taschen ads series, this book is worth having. Each decade from 1900 to 1999 reveals how Mad Ave folk sold booze and smokes to the public and as these products are very much discretionary buys, the copy goes to pretty much outlandish lengths to persuade buyers that a product is vastly superior to their competitor's version.

 

Looney Tunes Treasury

If you liked the look of the LT Treasury, check out The Hanna-Barbera Treasury, much more ambitious and full of extras. See some of them here:

Westread Book Reviews: 'toon nostalgia (5/5) (westreadreviews.blogspot.com) 

A worthwhile overview of Looney Tunes animation. I think the book is really aimed at a young market because of the rather flamboyant page design and youngsters will enjoy the various stuck-in additions throughout the title (it's worth saying that if you are buying a pre-used copy you'll need to check with the seller that all the loose items are in their envelopes).

Writer Andy Farago had the clever idea of having the cartoon characters write about themselves so they become much more friendly.

Fans of animation will also enjoy a book from the same publisher: The Hanna-Barbera Treasury (ISBN 978-1933784281) a much more ambitious work that, again, is stuffed with amazing extras.

Speed it up 4/5

This book is a reasonable visual survey of streamlined transport from a European perspective. America can claim to be the place where streamline really took off, though essentially seen as a commercial concept to sell more products. Add three speed lines or a horizontal teardrop shape to any household product to guarantee sales during the thirties and forties.

European designers didn't see streamline as a sales tool but more as an idea to increase speed in any form of transport, though I think the two authors have stretched the title by including, surprisingly, airships; there are several photos of the LZ Graf Zepperlin. The European-designed trains lacked the slickness of the American versions but it's worth remembering, in the case of steam trains, that the engines looked streamlined because they were completely covered in a metal shroud. The Henry Dreyfuss-designed New York Central 'Twentieth Century Limited' must have looked really impressive thundering through a rural station. European cars fared better in their design. Fiat and Peugeot looked as good as the very popular Chrysler 'Airflow' designed by Norman Bel Geddes.

The pages include most forms of transport, particularly trains and cars, with a look-in at motorcycles, ships and aircraft. I thought it unfortunate that all this interesting material wasn't presented to the reader with more care. The text and captions use quite small type and so many of the photos are excessively small despite plenty of page space to display them.