a 1948 ad for the Beacon II with synchronized flash
Toronto. George Dunbar came across this ad in Popular Mechanics for July 1948 and shared it with us. I did a couple of posts on this typical box camera and its predecessor (both dressed up to look like the popular minicams). The post on the Beacon is from a November, 1947 ad in Popular Mechanics, while this post shows the Beacon II from a May 1951 ad in LIFE magazine.
As mentioned earlier, the camera really is a simple box camera. Whitehouse, the maker, goes to great lengths in these ads to portray its cameras as more sophisticated minicams at far more reasonable prices.
Browse the previous two posts for more information on these rather simple plastic box cameras and see how the ads emphasize the good qualities while down playing or outright ignoring the not so good qualities. This was before the days of “Truth in Advertising”. Note that these ads simply omit the downside and infer the quality as a bargain at the price. Grey area?
