Our Mad Future Foretold in 1971
It’s giddy fun to look at vintage ephemera that predicts the future, usually because the predictions turn out to be so charmingly wrong. This 1971 item from Mad Magazine, though, turns out to be alarmingly right…except for the ultra-convenient home delivery! Four decades ago, a “Scene We’d Hate to See.” Today, a Scene We Wait to See. Mad, for sure!
From the awesome Flickr photostream of Christian Montone
Not too far off for sure. Every once and a while, someone gets it right. My favorite was the bottle of water. Do you think he ever thought of putting it in plastic bottles and selling it door to door?
One anomaly – there’s a newspaper.
Wow, you’re right! Guess that part, sadly, turns out to be a miss.
Gayle, thank you for posting this picture!! I was in a conversation with my father this past weekend and the topic of MAD Magazine came up. I never missed an issue from September 1977 through about the same time in 1987. Then I lost interest, but I still collected the vintage issues going back to the 50’s and still enjoy them today.
My father asked me why I lost interest, suggesting that I had “outgrown” it. And I said “No, that’s not it. I still find the vintage years of the magazine to be quite brilliant. The problem is that the world has turned into what was once funny.”
And this was the very picture that I referenced. I also remember when the Schick “Quatro” 4-blade razor came out years ago and laughing my head off at the commercial…because MAD artist Al Jaffee had a “products of the future” kind of article in the mid-70’s and had a razor with about a dozen blades on it. lol
I could go on and on. Thank you SO MUCH for this post!
Thanks to you for a great comment! In the 70s the only way I could read MAD was to sneak a peek at my older brother’s copy. Like you he treasured every copy, and I would have paid dearly were I caught with my dirty little-sister mitts on his collection!
And your observations are spot-on… like all great humor and satire there are revealing elements of truth. As you noted, we never knew then how TRUE it would turn out to be!
Note the cool angle on the MAD photo – they could have just shown it ‘flat’ and less interesting, but no – persistent quality from the #1 humor mag – Dave