Iconic pop-culture imagery from the past

 

This post originated from one of those spontaneous ideas that just occurred to one out of the blue. "Where the heck did the original test pattern used on old-school TVs come from and why to to bizarre picture?" I got quite excited about the idea and just a little while ago started digging into it. Almost instantly however I found a website called "Print" with an article entitled "Deciphering the Language of TV Test Patterns" by Stephen Heller which pretty much gives you all the information you could ever want in two minutes. So that took away my thunder.

"Wacky Pack" sticker.
Photo by Tom Gill
License CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Still though there is something to be said about enduring iconic imagery. I suspect if you're born in the 60s or earlier the test pattern is a major icon for you. So what will be the iconic images of today? Immediately I would say "the Internet" but it really doesn't have a universal symbol. There are some general ones, and definitely one which indicates Wi-Fi but nothing super specific where everyone around the world would know right away "that picture represents... Something." Where 90% of the people seeing the image would understand what it's referring to immediately.

I wonder if we are getting away from, iconic imagery in general? My childhood was certainly loaded with them even if a good chunk of that was thanks to commercial advertising.

 
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holder  Thomas Altfather Good

The Campbell's Soup can comes to mind (The four 50th Anniversary "Art Of Soup" Campbell's Tomato Soup cans featuring a facsimile autograph by, portrait of, and quote from,Andy Warhol. The commemorative cans were released on 2012-09-02 at Target Stores. They contain actual tomato soup.) Does anyone remember the "Wacky Pack" stickers that came out in the 70s they were kind of a mad magazine artwork format where they would do a take off on products?   I'll include images in this article if I can find copyright cleared examples.) There appears to be quite a big online hobbyist community dedicated to just Wacky Pack stickers so click Wacky Pack link if you really want to go down memory lane. For now I'll post a few images in this article.

 As you can tell I'm writing this on the fly because I really do want to get something posted tonight.

Maybe we will look back a few years now and the icon of the early 21st century will be the cell phone.

"Wacky Pack" sticker.
Photo by Tom Gill
License CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Although I must admit it won't be too exciting to look at. When a cell phone is turned off it looks like a black rectangle. Perhaps this is a time in to the old sci-fi movie 2001 a space Odyssey in which a mysterious "black rectangle" is discovered at several points in the movie.

What other icons or images helped shape my early life?… Oh I have one "The How And Why Wonder Books" series of books. Just the perfect kind of reading material for a young Geek mind. I had a small orange crate to hold my collection of maybe 15 to 20 books. They were great.

There was the original series Star Trek. But that's really not worth covering here because Star Trek iconography is still tremendously popular and all over the Internet. There are people out there that could do a much better job at covering its associated iconic symbols than I ever could.

Wonder Bread postcard 1961.
Photo by Steve Shook
License CC BY 2.0

Heck as a child even our bread was an icon. The "Wonder Bread" pattern was all over the place.

If this article sparks any imagery or iconic symbols for you. Let me know in the comments and we will keep adding to this post.

Take care and I will try to post another item in 24 to 48 hours. It is been very busy this week which is why there is been the disruption. Okay now let's see if I can find all the iconic artwork necessary for this post 😀.

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Photo by James Vaughan

Take care Patrick