MAD AD : SAVE YOUR HAIR!

I keep reading the headline to the tune of "Bang Your Head"

The preponderance of anti-baldness ads which populated comic books in the days up through its adolescence confused the matter as for whom comic books were intended. The audience was arguably always children, until the wave of underground comics in the Sixties and Seventies started ramping up the sex, gore, violence, illicit antics and subject matter. That's not where these ads appeared, though, raising the question of how many eight year-olds were obsessively checking their hairlines in the bathroom mirror every morning, back in the Fifties ...

If you can't double your hair, at least you can double your money.

Of course, adult-targeted ads dispel one of the common myths about comic books. Even as the books were publicly targeted at children so that adults -- or sufficiently old teens -- were shamed for indulging in "kids books," they were obviously being read by adults.

You can imagine the pitch the ad reps at assorted publishers may have made to potential advertisers. "We entertain a significant demographic of adults with disposable income, but get this -- they also read at a third-grade level. Our research indicates they're plenty dumb and awful gullible ..."

Kill these hair-destroying germs ... with fire!

Adults indulging in entertainment intended for younger audiences is more generally -- and even gleefully -- accepted now. As a for instance, take a look at the blog you are currently reading. It's worth mentioning that Pixar films, Harry Potter, Legos and a thousand other forms of entertainment you'd have gotten your ass kicked for enjoying in junior high school some years back is now effectively mainstream adult entertainment. It's also rewarding to imagine ads like this shoved in the middle of a Hunger Games novel, mind you. "Katniss and Peeta are in a real hairy situation, but are YOU in a hair-LESS situation?" Or even better, as pitched above, "DOES YOUR HEAD STINK?" I didn't even know "head odors" was a thing...

I also start wonderful self-massaging action within 3 seconds, but then I'm easily excitable.

There's still a Ward Laboratories out there, but this incarnation seems to be an agricultural science institute rather than a hair-growth scam ... but why can't it be both? There might be some cows out there with lovely golden locks ...

Jut so you know it's not all bad news, here's what to do when you get back all that lovely hair ...