World wrapped in plastic: 1948 cling-film ad

This 1948 ad for Viking's "VisQueen" plastic film paints a utopian vision of a world where everything is entombed in airtight plastic layers, rendering it sterile and impervious to the world's depredations and imperfections. My grandmother practiced this sort of mummification in her living room and most of the kitchen until all her grandchildren were well past adolescence.

A plastic cover for everything!

• [Deidzoeb]

  I don’t think it’s a coincidence that my more religious grandparents covered their fancier couches and armchairs and car seats with plastic like this. Deny yourself the full use and enjoyment and comfort of the couch today, in order to preserve it for use in a tomorrow that never comes. Pie in the sky won’t stain that upholstery!

• [splashu]

  How I long for the days when I could go to the store and pick up some notions.

• [OldBrownSquirrel]

  I wonder how long one would have to wait after using a toaster until it was cool enough that the plastic cover could be placed over it without risk of melting.

• [bronwen]

  Just looking at that ad makes me feel sticky and greasy. Just like everything in a kitchen covered in VisQueen was.

• [Stefan Jones]

  Mother looks like she’s gotten a wonderful idea: Wrap young Missy’s head in VisQueen! A stealthy blow to the head with that pewter pitcher will render the young one motionless long enough for a few impervious, Freshness Preserving layers to finish the job. 

• [Abend Haeker]

  Just put it over your face, like their grinning spokesmodel, and your clean, healthy smile can be preserved…forever. 

• [Mighty Blowhole]

  Weirdly enough, for the locals here in Alabam’, Visqueen is used as a generic name for larger plastic sheeting, like what Kleenex + Xerox are/were to tissues + copiers… ‘Zat anywhere else?

  • [AlexG55]

    Here in the UK, VisKING tubing (presumably named after the corporation) is the term used for tubes made of some kind of porous plastic membrane. They only time I’ve seen it is in a school science experiment at the equivalent of US middle-school level, where it’s used as a model gut- you put some starch/flour in the tube, spit in it, and immerse the whole thing in warm water. The starch stays in the tube, but the enzymes in your saliva break it down to sugar which can get out of the tube through the pores.

    I think the tubing is also the sort used in dialysis machines.

  • [Donald Petersen]

    On Hollywood movie sets, Visqueen usually refers to black plastic sheeting used to block out light (or, as Antinous mentions below, keep dust controlled at construction sites) in applications that need to be more weatherproof than the otherwise-commonly-used Duvetyne.  Like if you’re shooting a night scene inside a house during the day, you’d use tents of Duvetyne outside the windows to block out the daylight, but if it’s wet outside, you might not want to get your expensive Duvetyne soggy, so it’s Visqueen to the rescue!

• [Surly Driver]

  HELLO, FROM THE KITCHEN OF TOMORROW!

  That must be a full-time job keeping all those rolltop cabinets clean in a kitchen setting, VisQueen or no.

• [JontKopeck]

  Her leering visage in the bottom left, “come child, you’re going stale.”

• [Nadreck]

  Makes me sick to even look at it.  Our living room was like that: with plastic dust covers on all the lampshades that needed constant dusting.

• [freelikegnu]

   vacuum coffee brewer must have been popular in over-the-top trendy suburban space stations as it is today

• [dacker]

  In the trade show management business, VisQueen is the term used for the plastic which goes over a booth’s carpet while the exhibit is being assembled.  It’s removed when everything is done.

  Now I know the origin of the term. Thanks BB!  :-)

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Also what you see hanging around in construction zones to prevent dust from escaping. It’s quite popular in hospitals to keep the patients separate from the aspergillus.

• [MichaelWalsh]

  “This 1948 ad for Viking’s”  Actually it’s VisKing.

• [Ari B.]

  My grandmother didn’t saran-wrap the living room, but my great-grandmother did. It made sitting on the couch surprisingly unpleasant.

• [GregS]

  The past was weird.

• [accidentatstercolinem]

  She’s left the fridge door open! I hate that!

  For serious plastic coverage, check out Richie Haven’s mom’s couch here: 
  http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2098596/Photos-1970s-rock-stars-parents-reveal-humble-roots-childhood-homes.html 

• [penguinchris]

  The concept is common in some Asian cultures (China and Thailand at least). You’ll see it primarily in the living room, but in a different place than you might expect – rather than wrapping furniture (though I suppose some people probably do), almost everyone wraps up all of the remote controls.

  This results in disgusting, dirty, hard-to-clean, raggedy plastic covering up all the remote controls, and of course it never gets replaced. And lest you think it’s something only old people do, almost all of the young Chinese-Americans I know or have known (which is quite a lot) do it too when not living at their parents’ houses.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    The concept is common in some Asian cultures (China and Thailand at least).

    Because you really want to sit on plastic in a humid climate.

• [it194j]

  Ah, so that’s where the phrase “political VisQueen” in the Steve Miller Band’s excellent Macho City comes from. Great job, bOINGbOING!