Wednesday, December 01, 2010

my Willie obsession

Well I was all ready to blog about Hegel vs. Schoepenhauer, but my regular readers will have to wait while I work through my ongoing Willie obsession.

The Whaler Bar advertising campaign initially did NOT have Willie the Whaler. In the July 8, 1939 issue of the New Yorker the Whaler Bar ran an ad that was completely Willie-free:


How about that?

Willie made his first appearance in the January 20, 1940 New Yorker:



Between the ad and the postcard I have concluded that there was in fact no ship called "The Wanderer" but rather it was a conceit of the Whaler Bar that the bar itself was also a ship named "The Wanderer." Very odd - I guess "Whaler Bar" wasn't enough, they had to pretend they were on a ship too?

But two Willie mysteries remain: when did the Whaler Bar stop running Willie ads in the New Yorker, and who was the genius who invented and drew Willie the Whaler?