Persil: Looking Ahead

Persil: Looking Ahead

Behold the future! Where meals are consumed in pill form, and hankies are washed on television

There's nothing like a science fiction future to give you an insight into the concerns of its time. The ultra-modern city in this 1930 cartoon cinema ad for Persil is utopian in ambition, but also strangely lonely. A businessman lands his plane on a skyscraper roof and eats a solitary meal in pill form. His only company is a headless washer-woman on television who washes his hankies by hand. Utopia? You decide.

Adlets was an animation production company set up around the skills of Australian David Barker and specialising in cinema adverts. The future skyscraper bearing the company's name in this film turned out to be wishful thinking, as the company disappeared not long after this film was made.

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Pioneers of Screen Advertising

Almost from the dawn of film, advertising was a part of the filmgoing experience. This collection showcases some of screen advertising's earliest steps, as companies learnt to mimic the evolving forms of film comedy, drama, documentary and animation with the careful addition of their product as co-star.

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16 videos in this collection

One of the earliest surviving British adverts

The Spirit of His Forefathers

  • 1900
A gentleman cyclist learns the error of his ways in one of the earliest surviving British film advertisements.

Rudge-Whitworth - Britain's Best Bicycle

  • 1902

Girls Packing Soap

  • 1898

Changing Hues

  • 1922

Trojan Car Advert

  • York
  • 1926

Mr.........Goes Motoring

  • 1925

Cinema Commercial - Candy Cushions

  • 1920

The Tale of the Amp-lion

  • 1925

The Boy Who Wanted to Make Pictures

  • 1924

Looking Ahead

  • 1930

Does Your Wife Know?

  • Kingston Upon Thames
  • 1930

Ransomes Trolley Buses

  • Maidstone
  • 1929

Barbara's Secret

  • Devon
  • 1923

Transporting Loads - With or without Roads

  • 1920

Sound Advice

  • 1931

The Economist

  • 1921
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