October 22, 2011
I think we all know what OJ Simpson is famous for.
His shoes.
That’s right, long before he killed his wife and her boyfriend – OOPS! I mean some other guy killed them- OJ had a pretty lucrative gig endorsing footwear. Sure, we know him now for gloves (“If the gloves don’t fit you must ignore all the clear evidence of his obvious guilt and acquit.” That was the famous quote, right?) but there was a time when The Juice’s feet landed him on the back pages of every comic in America.
For the record, I don’t think I ever saw those shoes in any store.
I think OJ might have partial to golf shoes. After all, he spent a lot of time on the golf course- OOPS! I mean looking for the real killer- in between trials. But he was always fond of footwear and I remember this next ad from countless comics.
I really wish “OJ Dingo” had caught on. That would have been sweet.
But look at the second panel. What are those kids doing in the locker room, and what exactly is OJ doing? What kind of pose is that? Is he flexing for those kids? And how did he get dressed in the span of one panel? Did he just throw that shirt on over his pads? He must stink! Or did OJ stop to shower before dressing? So were those kids just waiting around while OJ showered? Did Jeph Loeb write this crappy comic?
When I was a kid, around the time that ad came out. I owned and wore a pair of cowboy boots, I am ashamed to say, but I have no idea if they were Dingos. And putting on my Mr. Grammar hat for a quick second, can someone explain to me the reason for the apostrophe in “Dingo’s”?
But that wasn’t the Dingo Kids’ only brush with fame.
All these ads put me in mind of one more. It doesn’t feature OJ but it has some athletes who didn’t murder their wives- OOPS! I mean athletes who also had great careers and it seemed to be on the back of every comic book from when I was five years old until I was about 18. To me this is the archetypical comic book ad. While The Insult that Made a Man Out of Mac is a true classic, and who can forget Sea Monkeys and cardboard submarines, this is what I think of when I think of comic books.
Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride 
We had the very same Spalding ad over here, too 🙂 But not the OJ ones, we didn’t even know who he was, actually… I think I also remember the dingo-trips-thief one. They were on Topolino (that’s Mickey Mouse here).
Anyway, they’re simply fantastic 🙂 Dingo meet oj is my favorite 😀 The main requirement for anybody working in advertisement is NOT to be able to draw up to any level of decency, apparently…
Theory: by “Dingo’s” could they possibly mean “Dingo’s boots”? As in “the baker’s (shop)”? Grammar and art, two subjects that are banned from adverstising schools 😀
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Yeah, I thought of the Dingo’s boots thing too but it still doesn’t quite fit for me.You would wear Dingo boots, not Dingo’s boots. That apostrophe indicates posession. You would wear a pair of Dingos or Dingo boots, like a pair of Nikes or Nike sneakers.
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True… unless dingo is an acronym, like CD’s or DVD’s ;-P
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