I wrote last time about the photography of the Apollo 11 mission, and after the 50th anniversary last weekend, space has been on my mind. NASA has built a treasure trove of photos over the years and they recently realised 140,000 of their best. Including the Earth, astronauts on space walks and gaseous galaxies from deep space. Stunning.
The not-so-sweet story of New Coke
In the past week I polished off Stranger Things 3. In one of the later episodes the kids try new Coke and have diverging opinions about the product. New Coke was always held up as a warning to marketers about what not to do. Conspiracy stories abound about what was going on at Coke at the time, but I found this story about the other forces at play that saw the new cola die a very public and famous death. It’s also a story relevant to modern day in how backlash can be manufactured and ulterior motives abound.
I’ve been in advertising for around half my life. I thankfully haven’t had to make many ethical choices about what I work on (cigarette advertising has been banned, haven’t done much work for mining companies, and my work on casinos and chemicals is in the past). One thing I would object to working on now is gambling. I’ve become anti-gambling and think it does an inordinate amount of damage in society. This year, one AFL player has copped a huge fine and a 12-week playing ban for gambling on games. The players are warned about it, not just in terms of affecting games but in terms of their welfare. The hypocrisy is that the AFL is heavily sponsored by gambling. Western Bulldogs player Easton Wood has spoken out about it. He claims he’d be happy to be paid less if it meant less gambling sponsorship in the game. I can only think this would be a good thing. Kids know the odds on games and that can’t be healthy.
As a huge fan of Pixar and the Toy Story franchise, I was very concerned when Toy Story 4 was announced. How could they possibly follow the perfect ending of Toy Story 3? They had perfectly wrapped up the narrative. Why continue…other than of course the lure of more money? (Mel Brooks in Spaceballs comes to mind, “We’ll all meet again in Spaceballs 2: The Search for More Cash”.) But I do love the craft and storytelling of Pixar, so I enjoyed reading about the creation of new toy character, Forky, as voiced by Veep and Arrested Development star, Tony Hale. I especially liked the part that one of the suggestions for his name was Forkface, which they couldn’t go with for obvious reasons.
If you’ve ever seen a strange off-brand product pop up in the aisles of your supermarket, it could be the work of a merry prankster who goes by the brand name Obvious Plant. I’m a big fan and This is Colossal has a good collection of some of his pieces. He started with signage or possibly as a Tumblr and moved into plastic packaged toys. If you’re quick you might just snag one of them when he pops them up on eBay. They’d make great toys for the kids.
