A Scottish child and a Native-American child pour hair tonic on the head of an elderly Anglo man and massage it in, while a child soldier out of some European comic opera stands by with sword upraised in tribute.
The only sensible part of this weird iconography is the Scottish kid. Once upon a time, right up to, oh, the 1960s, "anything Scottish = cheap and economical" was standard advertising shorthand.
A few weeks ago, Paul posted about a plan the U.S. military cooked up during WWII to destroy Japan by triggering volcanic explosions. The article below describes a similarly mad plan -- the Bat Bomb. The idea was to strap incendiary devices to bats, and then drop the bats on Japanese cities.
I scanned the article from the Atlantic Monthly, December 1946. I think this was one of the first public descriptions of the bat bomb.
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Stereotypes and Cliches, Hair Styling, 1900's, Weapons, Hair and Hairstyling