# A Cecil spotting

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-cecil-spotting/807382>\
**Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\
**Created:** [January 24, 2018, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-cecil-spotting/807382 "2018-01-24T15:51:40Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 2\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![Clothahump](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/51bf81/32.png) [@Clothahump](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Clothahump)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2018, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-cecil-spotting/807382/1 "2018-01-24T15:51:40Z")

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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?

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**Author:** ![JKellyMap](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jkellymap/32/15880_2.png) [@JKellyMap](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JKellyMap)\
**Post date:** [January 24, 2018, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-cecil-spotting/807382/2 "2018-01-24T17:51:58Z")

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> [@Clothahump](#):
>
> Anybody else have a Cecil spotting recently?

No, but that’s cool! Thanks for sharing.