[78-L] ^Tire swing cartoon – What the Customer Wanted

David Lennick dlennick at sympatico.ca
Sat Jan 8 07:50:55 PST 2011


A few versions of it here:
http://www.google.ca/search?q=%22what+the+customer+wanted%22&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a

dl

On 1/8/2011 10:32 AM, Rodger Holtin wrote:
> OK, I know this is way off-topic, but I hope some of you guys can help me with this one.
> Â
> In the early 1970’s I worked in a college recording studio and the boss had an old cartoon on the bulletin board above his desk.  I’ve thought about its wisdom many times over the years and regret that I didn’t have my own copy.  This was long before scanners or fax machines, even before desktop copiers were very common; it was a “Photostat” or early Xerox.
> Â
> First panel was What the Customer Wanted: a picture of a simple old swing – an old tire suspended by a rope from the branch of a tree.
> Â
> Next panel was something like As Designed by Engineering:Â  same tree, two ropes, one on the branch, one on the trunk.
> Â
> Next panel was something like As Promoted by Marketing: same tree, two tires, one rope
> Â
> Next panel was something like As Modified by Research and Development: same tree, tire, same tire, three ropes one tied to the trunk, one to the branch one to another branch
> Â
> Last panel was something like As Installed by Contracting:Â  same tree, tire on the ground, rope tied to trunk of the tree.
> Â
> Only the First and Last are right, the others I made up from faulty old memory, but certainly building on the pattern that each new version from some Vaunted Professional Department was further from the original concept than the previous, and all but the first were completely unworkable.
> Â
> Has anybody got a copy of that or know where I can get one??  I’ve looked on the ‘Net to no avail.  I’m kinda surprised that nobody has already sent it to me in all forwarded junk I’ve gotten over the last 12-15 years I’ve had e-mail – including many other old cartoons from the old days.  (The MSDS sheet for “woman” is still a classic.)
> Â
> 78 Content: slight, but the studio manager for whom I worked (he started at KRLD in ’34) pointed the cartoon out to me when we got some new records back from the pressing plant.  Not only had they changed the color scheme on the cover and the label (thus no longer the school colors) they had added tons of echo to our master tape and some passages were boosted to the point of distortion.  He took the cartoon over to the university business office and had a copy made and sent it back to the pressing plant with five or ten cases of returned records.  I’ve run into something like that again and would love to share that cartoon with some others who would really appreciate it about now.  Any help appreciated.
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> Rodger
>
> For Best Results use Victor Needles.
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