Solidox: Molar Mischief

1946
Sound
2m

Look out, germs at work! These loveable molar mischief making puppets really dig tooth decay.

This post-WWII toothpaste ad feels years ahead of its time, featuring a gang of wacky stop motion puppets that revel in a plaque problem. The set inside the mouth and the germ characters manage to be successfully charming and grotesque at the same time. Animator Edwin Shorter patented his puppet construction process, but failed to make a career from it.

The film is shot in British Tricolour, a three-strip colour process that used a prism in a similar but far less successful way to Technicolor. It was developed by Jack Coote, but later bought by Dufay-Chromex and rebranded as Dufaychrome, but had disappeared by the mid-1950s.

The Art of Advertising

There's an art to selling, as any ad man or woman will tell you. And Britain's screen advertising has been among the most artistically ambitious of all.

This collection highlights the evolution of an extraordinarily dynamic industry, from its first faltering steps in the earliest days of film, to the highly sophisticated mini-masterpieces of the television age. It showcases the astonishing variety of approaches, strategies and tricks advertisers have used to part us with our money - entertaining us even as they subtly manipulate us with promises of a new, tastier, brighter, cleaner, healthier and better life.