Real English Wine (Magazine Ad)

The government strongly promoted the ‘Buy British’ message in the 1970s. It was so keen to prove the scientific superiority of British products that large-scale experiments were commissioned.

Scarfolk University, for example, was given four million pounds to develop a computer that could record the brainwaves of hundreds of Real English Wine drinkers and then convert those brainwaves into sounds and images.

Scientists (and advertising agency executives who planned to exploit the results) predicted the result would produce “a wide variety of positive images, including majestic British landscapes accompanied by the sounds of waves and music as beautiful as anything written by maestros such Sir Edward Elgar or Cliff Richard”.

In actual fact, all the subjects’ brains produced exactly the same image: An electrified cage containing a baby monkey whose mind had been destroyed by medical experiments, systematic torture and the jarring sound of a toy mechanical bear mercilessly beating a drum 24 hours a day.

Despite this apparent setback, the Real English Wine committee ran with this image in their advertising campaigns. The wine sold well in Scarfolk, simply by virtue of being British, as did a spin-off ‘soft-toy’ monkey, which wasn’t actually a soft-toy at all, but a real dead monkey.

1970s Pornography

Even an archive as respectable as Scarfolk's contains artefacts that some might deem offensive. In 1970s Britain, many aspects of life became increasingly sexualised, though sex was rarely one of them.

As you look at these pornographic magazines, which were aimed at lovers of Brutalism, please remember that the 1970s were a very different time with its own mores and values.

Click on the brown paper bag to access the magazines. You must be over the age of 18* (SFW).

 

 *with a City & Guilds qualification in town planning.

Halloween Masks

(Page taken from the weekly children's hobby magazine 'Which Craft?')

In 1970s Scarfolk, children liked to make Halloween masks out of everyday household items such old curtains, ritually-sacrificed livestock and executed criminals.

The latter were so sought-after that mischievous children planted evidence of crimes that ensured the arrest and capital punishment of relatives in the hope of inheriting a head with which to make a mask.

Happy Halloween/Samhain from everyone at Scarfolk Council!

Panama Laundry Detergent Magazine Advertisement (1976)

In the 1970s, husbands gave their wives weekly housekeeping allowances to maintain the household. Many housewives claimed they were buying pricey washing detergents such as Panama Automatic (see above), when in fact they were buying packets of a cheap alternative and refilling used Panama boxes at home. The money they saved was spent on vast amounts of gin, which was distributed via a secret, international network of trusted housewives.

Teetotal housewives hid the money in fake, child trafficking companies and used their own children to perpetuate the façade. The schemes were uncovered in 1979 when a Scarfolk pensioner, who had siphoned tax-free money from her housekeeping allowance for decades, tried to buy Wales. The woman claimed to know nothing about the money or the fake companies and insisted that they were all the dealings of her pet tortoise, Cammy, who had recently died.

'Win A Cottage' Sunday Supplement Advertisement (1976)

Between 1970 and 1976 the government vastly overspent on state and private prisons and was disheartened when crime didn't rise to match the amounts being invested to control it.

Local councils were directed to encourage criminal activity but when they also failed to produce the required crime figures, the government's Office of Spurious Welfare developed a scheme to attract new offenders.

It targeted the aspirational lower-middle class by shrewdly portraying lawbreaking as an upwardly mobile activity and prison sentences as socially desirable. Pro-jail messages were subliminally printed on fake antiques, mass-produced Royal memorabilia and incorporated into newspaper Sunday supplement competitions for dream cottages in the country (see above).

Emergency laws were also made to ensure that crime would become more prevalent. One law, the so-called Passerby Criminal Indolence Law, which is still in effect today, penalises people who refrain from committing a crime when the opportunity arises, even if they could have got away with it.

"Lung Puppy" Sentient Toy (1975)

This magazine scan is of an advert for 'Lung Puppy', one of the many so-called "sentient toys" on the market in the 1970s. Not only did it follow your child anywhere (as long as your child was breathing), it also contained a device in the tongue that tested the child's galvanic skin response. If it detected inappropriate sweating, it assumed guilt and administered a Taser-like shock (see also: electrified Bibles, 'Discovering Scarfolk' p.149). The toy was not recommended for asthmatics or those being regularly waterboarded.

A more sophisticated version of the Lung Puppy - the Lung Alpaca - was used by the prison service to patrol cell blocks in Scarfolk Gaol. However, Lung Alpacas were withdrawn from service when 12 prisoners harvested the Alpaca's wool, knitted tunnelling equipment and escaped. By chance the gang was recaptured when a Lung Puppy which was previously owned by one of the criminals as a child detected his owner's breathing and lead police to the hideout.

"The Anti-Weeping Campaign" Magazine Advertisement (1977)

This advertisement appeared in children's magazines in the 1970s following studies into child behaviour. Researchers found that children were essentially miniature sociopaths and the only reason they didn't run amok on murderous rampages was because they couldn't reach the knife drawer in the kitchen.

Unable to kill en masse, they instead demanded attention by intentionally causing accidents and feigning injury or distress: knocking over boiling pans, slipping in dog excrement, leaping out of police helicopters.

In addition to being irksome, infant tears were deemed to be nothing short of psychological weapons. Parents were warned to arm themselves against the emotional assaults of their offspring, particularly because, if left unchecked, their child might eventually develop dark supernatural powers.

Indeed, for many years people believed that infant sobs contained potentially lethal occult messages. For example, the often-heard whine "Please help me, I'm trapped under the front wheels of this bus", when played backwards sounds like "The Moomins will come; they will fuck you up."

TV Times magazine (1975)

Throughout the 1970s, ITV programmes were tailored to mollify the proletariat. Talent shows, low-IQ quiz shows and sitcoms about average working people were carefully constructed to mislead viewers into believing they were important.

But were they?

A 1973 survey showed that 87.5% of politicians deemed their working-class constituents to be less important than a second family car or having regular bowel movements. The concept of a functioning 'society', of which the working class believed they were a valuable part, when in fact they were little more than consenting serfs, had been invented by an eight-year-old hobby virologist who worked part-time for the government in the Department of Domestic Propaganda.

A fabricated sense of worthiness among the working class also benefited advertisers and therefore the economy. As one Scarfolk sociologist noted:
"When people think they are important they buy expensive continental wines and Custard Cream biscuits, and they won't even notice if they've misplaced one or two of their many children". Indeed, the aforementioned 1970s survey indicates that 78% of adults would have rather lost a child than a biscuit.

"Gaol!" Weekly (1970-79)

Sports were banned in Scarfolk (see Discovering Scarfolk page 41 for further details). However, a legal loophole permitted the playing of ancient games, as long as they were an integral part of a religious ritual.

Mayan football and other sacrifice-based Mesoamerican ballgames, which often employed human heads or skulls instead of balls, became all the rage. Not only were these early games fun and exciting, but they also gave citizens the opportunity to use up any surplus of tourists that had become ensnared in traps during the summer season.

"Gaol!" weekly was the number-one selling football publication at the time and each issue included a pull-out poster of a hat or toupee once worn by the longest serving 'headballs', the most popular of which was Mr. Kenneth Trampel of Ramsgate, Kent, who was a veteran of 22 games until his left ear fell off.