Comedy and tragedy in a WWII anti-freeze ad

Incredibly, this is not an old ad encouraging you to nag your doc for a barbiturates prescription, but rather, a WWII-era Dupont anti-freeze ad.

Zerone and Zerex

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

MORE: ads • automotive • happy mutants • illustration • Old school • Weird

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Boundegar

They forgot the part about do not feed it to your cat.
http://unutterable.org GiovanniGF

What worries me is that if I have to choose one of those two faces for winter will I be forced to wear the other one in the summer?
jwkrk

That’s ZEREX, kids, not to be confused with ZaRex, the delicious fruit flavored drink concentrate!

http://zarexusa.com/product.html
- jimh
  
  Also by Dupont?
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stefan_e_jones/ Stefan Jones

You’ll also turn green and look sad if you drink the stuff.
chaopoiesis

The talking duck face.

Isn’t ZERONE the secret ingredient in all digital technology?
fredh

On the one hand, the Du Pont duck mascot is intelligent enough to wear earmuffs. On the other, he’s stuck around here instead of flying south with the flock. Is he a rugged individualist, or is he antisocial? Maybe both. And why should I want to buy anti-freeze from a duck with those kind of values? This whole situation is fowl.
- http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair
  
  Why do you hate success?
  - fredh
    
    Duckcess.
http://artdonovan.typepad.com Art

Either face would be fine as long as I could also wear that cool hat and ascot.
http://www.facebook.com/postelwait Cameron Postelwait

both options scare the shit out of me.
Matthew Stone

I want to wear the Linkara face.
BillStewart2012

Antifreeze back then wasn’t always ethylene glycol – even into the late 60s a lot of it was basically methanol (with some kind of dye in it so you know you’ve bought something, and how dilute it is in your radiator.) The boiling point’s lower than water, so it wasn’t going to give you summer boil-over protection, but it was very effective at preventing freezing. And no, you really didn’t want to drink it.

We used the stuff in junior high school chemistry class – it was a cheap source of methanol.
TimmoWarner

Hrmm. Neither face appealing. Must investigate further.
Jesse in Japan

Is the DuPont logo supposed to be the head of a sperm cell? Or is that just me?