Eye-catching trousers from old JC Penny catalog

Here's one of Mitch O'Connell's choice flea market finds: A catalog from JC Penny's Big Men's Shop. "Exciting colors and eye-catching patterns."

Party in My Pants 1 | 2

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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7-how-7

reminds me of the Zoot Fenster song “The Man on Page 602″, which was a response to a Sears catalog that seemed to show the tip of some guy’s package. There is a youtube of the song:

http://bit.ly/adBLP8
Aloisius

I really don’t understand. It is an artifact of the material, the high waist and tightness of their pants. You put me in a pair of pants like that and nothing will be left to the imagination.
Anonymous

My father had the red ones. I still have nightmares about it.
bklynchris

Who knew any man could ever make a pair of red polyester pants with white naugahyde belt and shoes look….sexy?

and, oh yeah….

OHHHHHHHHHHH MYYYYYYYYYYY GAAAAAAAWWWWWWWWD!!!!!!!!!!
mellowknees

It just occurred to me – does anyone else think that maybe prosthetics were involved in these photo shoots? It’s just that these dudes appear to be much more identical in the crotchal area than most guys I see.

Not that I spend my day staring at crotches.
Anonymous

Image search “Gangs of New York”-throw a waist coat and a top hat on with those and you’d be quite the dandy.
Anonymous

I would like to get to know the brown plaid on the right :)
jimh

a series of tubes
- Jeff Vader
  
  I lol’d :)
  
  in dottering senator voice FTW
Donald Petersen

Where are their hands??

Had me a pair of these in 1976, in patriotic red, white & blue plaid. Nattiest lad in kindergarten, was I.
MrJM

I guess there’s a reason those guys couldn’t go Sansabelt.
Anonymous

The reason they look bigger than average is because back then there were less plastics in the bloodstream, the ones that are responsible these days for reduced genital size, sperm count, etc… These are all dropping 10% a decade or something. Funny but also scary in terms of the CHILDREN OF MEN potential.
bcsizemo

Most flat front slacks (that are not altered) and any jeans that are not super baggy/carpenter tend to have this effect on me…

I think it’s because I have fairly large thighs front to back, it seems to cause a weird pulling issue.

So I don’t own jeans, never have. And I mostly wear cargo pants or pleated pants/slacks.
gpeare

A Full Cleveland! (Middle model, right panel) Excellent.
Jake0748

First thing that came to my mind… My wife, who is a fairly recent immigrant to the US from Eastern Europe, calls the seafood restaurant Long John Silvers, “Long Johnsons”.
Anonymous

look at those banana trousers. just look at them.
Anonymous

They all dress on the left.
Mitch

Very apropos for a site called “BoingBoing”.
montrealfilmguy

as Anon pointed out the J in JC is probably for johnson and i guess the C is for …oh you figure it out boingers !
Anonymous

Remind me to watch Boogie Nights today…
corestrength

Guilty as charged….in junior high, no less
montrealfilmguy

o.k. now i’m thinking JC penneys started out as JC penis,but could not get past that stupid non-porn registration of commerce name law.
Anonymous

I just get the feeling this should have been a “Look at this awesome banana…” post. ;)
franko

those certainly ARE… eye catching…
OUTSTANDING

apparently er’body tucked to the left back in the day.
kc0bbq

Old Sears catalogs are good for the ‘raging boner’ effect. I want to believe it’s the cut of the pants of that era, mixed with the pose and the not using diffused lighting.

Either that or everyone was seriously packing in those days. Back when men were real men who wore synthetic pants.
Phikus

The Bay City Rollers got nothin’ on these guys.
- Phikus
  
  Actually they might have. I can’t tell from this angle.
rollerskater

i’ll bet you those are some wild and crazy guys.
facetedjewel

The whole cowboy thing wasn’t working out for Ennis and Jack. They do look happy in their new careers.
ethancoop

thanks boingboing, time to call my shrink & talk about my inadequacy issues
Mim

#15 Anon, mentioned the first half of this: “Ah, so that’s what they mean by ‘big men.’”

But I’m surprised no one has commented yet about how slender these “big men” are, and how different that is from today’s “big and tall men’s” shops.

I don’t mean to suggest my mind isn’t right there in the gutter with the rest of y’all… I’d happily accept this option for “big and tall” men… but where are the other types of chubbies?
- jackie31337
  
  but where are the other types of chubbies?
  
  Even today, “plus size” models (both men and women) are often significantly smaller than the average person who would be wearing the clothes. I’ve actually seen a woman who looks to be a size 12 at the most modeling a muumuu in a plus-size catalog. It’s only been recently that more retailers have been using actual larger-than-average people to model larger-than-average clothes.
igpajo

Shopped!! :P
Anonymous

Ain’t that a peach.
Shithead

Before porn was such a huge industry the actors had to make a buck somehow.
mellowknees

it was the 70s – there was not a whole lot of underpants-wearing, I’m going to guess.

And now I have to try to decide – which would I rather see? Buttcracks, muffin tops, boxer shorts (today), or “just look at this banana” (my childhood).

Hmmm…wow…I AM stumped.
Antinous / Moderator

I went over to see what JC Penny men’s crotches look like today. They all seem to be tucking.
edgore

It is quite possible that one of those big/and or tall men pictured is my middle school science teacher Mister Eggold, renowned about campus as a male catalog model!
Anonymous

Ah, so that’s what they mean by “big men.”
PaamayimNekudotayim

“We have to search up your thighs and between your legs until we meet resistance.”
- morcheeba
  
  In that case, I definitely need to get jneilnyc’s pants, just so that the TSA knows where to stop!
  
  http://bit.ly/LgvcS
  - jneilnyc
    
    Until recently, I would have said the less-endowed among us might have bought those pants figuring the TSA would never thing of checking “there” – talk about hiding something in plain sight!
ilex

I also compared these photos to the current catalog images, this difference might explain current raised infertility rates?
Anonymous

Unlike you younguns, I was trapped in the ’70s for ten years…it was awful. The worst part was the fake plastic woodgrain on everything. Cars with junky chrome everywhere. Disco music, which people took seriously for some reason. Ugh. And, believe it or not, kids, but suitcases had no wheels — you really had to lug your luggage through the airport. Oh, and no computers. It was a grim time. Let’s not bring it up again, shall we?

It’s Penney, by the way, not Penny.
jneilnyc

I wonder why these never caught on: http://bit.ly/LgvcS
S2

Herb Tarleck wishes this explained a lot about Herb Tarlek.
Anonymous

The J in JC Penny must stand for “johnson”
Anonymous

Our house was built in 1968.

The previous owners left wall-to-wall shag carpeting covering every floor in the house. They also left one wall in the dining room covered in a sort of marbleized mirror, and the entrance to the dining room featured â€œwestern styleâ€ swinging doors. It looked like the background of every before-prom snapshot ever taken between 1967 and 1977. The Osmond family would have looked right at home.

My wife insisted we remove the carpeting, and to our delight we found what realtors describe as â€œgleamingâ€ hardwood flooring underneath..

Back to the original subject, as a teenager in the ’70s, I found clothes like that unspeakably ugly. I stuck to jeans and boots and my dads old narrow-lapeled suit jackets from 1962.