In randomly wandering around teh Interwebz, I stumbled across a discussion of the famous (or infamous) Sears catalog of 1975 that supposedly showed a very well endowed underwear model’s junk. I clicked on the link for the Museum of Hoaxes discussion (the Man On Page 602) and discovered this:
As far as we know, here at the Museum of Hoaxes, no one has ever checked the previous issue (Spring/Summer) to confirm that no genitalia is visible. **Cecil Adams of the Straight Dope (writing in 1997) said, somewhat tongue-in-cheek, that Sears denied his request “to visit the Sears archive and inspect this earlier catalog.” **
So when we noticed a copy of the 1975 Spring/Summer catalog for sale on eBay for $5, we decided to spend the money and buy it. In the interest of the advancement of human knowledge, of course.
And so we can now confirm (with our apologies to any who were still holding out hope that a guy really did expose himself in the 1975 catalog) that Sears was correct. The earlier version of the photo shows nothing peeking out of the model’s shorts. The blemish/printing smudge/stray genitalia is not there.
Anybody else have a Cecil spotting recently?
No, but that’s cool! Thanks for sharing.