You know how sometimes you wake up with a question that’s already lodged in your head? Like it was placed there by some unseen cosmic force, because that question is deeply important? Sure you do. This morning this happened to me, and that question was What Is The Least Appetizing Picnic Ever Featured in a Car Brochure? You’d think this would be the sort of question that would take a lifetime to answer, but, incredibly, I think I have somehow managed to find it right away. In a 1970 Mercury brochure.
I suspect some manner of otherworldly forces conspired to guide me to this brochure; there’s really no other reasonable explanation that accounts for how perfectly unappetizing this picnic looks in that photograph. It’s too perfect, and the odds of just finding it by chance seem astronomical. Some other powers are at play here. There must be a reason we needed to see this.
The brochure the Least Appetizing Picnic is in is an interesting one, a 1970 Mercury brochure that seems to be focused on selling wagons to men, real men, like the one one puckishly peering out of this zero:
The brochure is filled with pictures of handsome mercury wagons, like this Marquis:
The brochure also features some non-car pictures that seem to feature what early 1970s concepts of cultured, erudite masculinity would entail, like models of tall sailing vessels:
I feel like the phrase “advent of steam” is one of those that never fails to draw me into something painfully within my old man demographic. Also, were “shallow-draft lumber carriers” of the Great Lakes such a widespread interest back in the late ’60s and early ’70s?
The Meteor wasn’t as fancy as the Marquis, but it showed its “headlamp theme” unashamedly and, you know, ushered in that look of action. It was also paired with this saddle:
Yes, model ships and saddles! Perfect for the man’s man that wore a sportcoat made out of prime-rib steaks stitched together with bailing wire and smoked rolled-leather cigars filled with thinly-sliced prosciutto and Turkish tobacco.
Okay, one more wagon to clear your mind’s palette, and then let’s see this picnic:
Wow. I know that this is very fancy food – Chef Ellsworth of Sheraton Universal isn’t going to throw together some garbage. There’s a Linzer torte, ribs, chicken, some fruit, skewers jammed into carcasses, and it’s all just plopped down there in the tall grass.
Maybe it’s the old color-faded photography, maybe it’s the fact it’s just on the ground there, likely swarming with ants and other hungry insects, maybe its the thought of trying to deal with all those bones and skewers, I can’t put my finger on just one thing, but as an overall image, this picnic is wildly unappetizing.
Imagine showing up at a picnic and seeing this and being told “okay everybody – dig in!” and then just standing there, not seeing any sort of plate or utensils or anything, and just thinking “how?”
There’s certainly been other unappealing picnics in the brochure world; remember this sullen-looking one?
That one isn’t great. But there’s plenty far more appealing ones out there, too:
… and even Mercury figured out how to make picnics look less horrifying later, in this Sable brochure:
That one isn’t amazing – it’s mostly just bread and fruit – but it is definitely less horrifying than the fancy mess in the grass up there.
Am I being unfair, here? Is this just my lack of refinement showing? I’m not sure.
What I can say is that I do really appreciate all of the options Mercury offered for the back halves of their wagons:
Two different arrangements of jump seats at the rear, and that amazing two-way tailgate. Why aren’t those a thing anymore?
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