I got the May issue of MR in the mail yesterday. Looks like a great issue, BUT I found the Rapido ad on page 5 in VERY poor taste. I have subscribed to MR for 12 years, and my young children like to flip through its pages. I have never had any reason to have to explain any questionable content to them, but this ad contains sexual inuendo that does not help promote the product it advertises and does change the tenor of the magazine. I have emailed both MR and Rapido to express my concern. If you find ads like this out of place in a magazine like MR, I encourage you to email MR and Rapido to express your concern as well. You can contact both companies through the “contact us” tab on their respective web sites.
Ron, it seems to me that your overheated imagination has provided sexual innuendo that the ad DOES NOT contain.
Reminds me of the story of the scientist who wanted to observe a chimpanzee. He put the chimp in a room with a variety of items, then locked the door and bent down to look through the keyhole.
He saw the chimp’s eyeball looking right back at him.
In my copy of the magazine the item on the other side of the door is, in fact, a hot caboose (hack, way car, cabin, crummy…) What’s wrong with that - other than the fact that it doesn’t resemble anything my prototype ever ran?
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964 - with lukewarm brake vans)
i really really don’t want to start an arguement or make any judgement on your values . and i respect the fact that you’re so protective of your children . but really , there’s more sexual inuendo in a Disney movie or Bugs Bunny cartoon than in that ad .
i’ll agree it’s not a very good opener for the ad , but because it’s just a cheap line and adds no info to the ad , not because it’s offensive .
This item is still so secret that if you want to see it before its Fall debut you are going to have to peek through the keyhole to catch a view. This joke of the kid looking through the keyhole dates back to at least the middle of the 19th Century and first manifested itself as spying on parents wrapping Christmas presents and not, as your posting infers, on catching a peek at Sister Suzy undressing–that came later and was probably an object of vaudvillian humor but I don’t really know that for sure.
I had already seen the ad, and had to go back and look at it again, it just didn’t strike me that way, and I hadn’t even thought about that angle until it was brought up. I rather imagine that unless something was said in front of the children, it wouldn’t occur to them either. I do have to wonder though, are there some skeletons in your past? Does this hit too close to Home?
On behalf of the magazine and the advertiser, I’d like to thank you for increasing circulation (of the magazine that is!) and readership of that advertisement beyond anyone’s wildest hopes. I just hope all the people who peek under the plain brown wrapper aren’t disappointed to find only a caboose!
Anybody consider that just maybe this was precisely the sort of response, in this Internet Age - and thus enticement for everyone to take a look at the ad for themselves - that Rapido’s advertising department was hoping for? Looks more like a very clever advertising gimmick to me, then anything else…these guys ain’t stupid, ya know.
Odds are that this ad will now get 10x the attention it would have otherwise. Smart move, Rapido! [;)]
I didn’t see anything offensive in that ad. I give my magazine to my ten year old granddaughter when I am done with them and she reads them cover to cover.
Very mild compared to the NMRA publication back around 1976 or so. The entire year was a discussion of the appropriateness and placement of outhouses and one issue had an article on building a strip club with a naked female dancer on stage. That was the one and only year I joined the NMRA.
Well I suppose there are a couple of things going on here.
First we have a parent who is concerned about what their children see and how they view it with in the moral context of the family. Good for them.
Second the reality is that there is someone sitting somewhere that can find an objection to almost anything based on their own perceptions of the world. Fortunately we don’t live in a country like Iran and no person’s views do not dictate what the rest of look at or think.
Three, ok conspiracy buffs lighten up. If the advertising department REALLY wanted to get more eyeballs on their ad don’t you think a posting like this (assuming it is a plant) would be on Yahoo not on the board where everybody already gets the mag?
Yeh, good old Whit Towers…and just what did he call those outhouses on flat cars? And how about back in the 1950’s, when Model Railroader magazine was briefly prohibited from entering the Canadian postal system because some of the ads were considered to be obscene!!! [:-^]
Or the ads in MR in the 80’s featuring a hot blonde who wanted to be your “Tool Lady”.
Then there was the Atlas trackplanning book from the the 50’s which featured a guy with a copy of “Playman” thrown on the floor with copy of “Choo” that he was ogling.
I haven’t seen the May MR yet, but I WILL be checking out the Rapido ad.
The OP expressed a concern. You can agree to disagree with him if you like. However, I think we’ve gotten more than enough mileage out of all other examples given.
Let’s say we throw the switch and move to a different track. Thanks.