I see it all the time in movies from the late-60s/early-70s variety.
Well, it doesn’t look as much like a dildo as a car’s stick shift, and the the phone’s rotary dial was on the bottom base. So, if you wanted to dial, you had to pick it up. Still, whenever anyone was talking into it, it looked like a big penis.
Did this phone style have a name?
No, but from now on it will be known as the Sarcastiphone.
Would it be a candlestick phone? I bought one in 1980 (it was a rotary too) and it was a pain in the ass to use. Paid $125 for it and couldn’t give it away 6 months later.
Here is an entire site devoted to them
You young whippersnappers probably don’t remember back to the days of the Bell telephone monopoly, when you didn’t own your phone, but rented it from The Phone Company. Back in the 1960s (before the Princess Phone), all phones looked exactly the same, and almost all were black. A phone in some other color was extremely exotic.
When those Ericophones first appeared in movies or TV shows, we were dumbstruck. They were like something from another planet or from the 25th century.
Although I never had one or, as far as I can recall, even saw one live in person, I remember hearing that one reason that they weren’t more popular was that since the hook switch was on the bottom, if you wanted to put the phone down without hanging up, you had to lay it on its side. Beginning users usually didn’t realize this, and hung up on callers unintentionally. Interesting design, but not extraordinarily practical.
Couldn’t you just use it for show, and not plug it in? Those antique phones are quite lovely, in my opinion.
I think this phone was made as a matching accessory to the “penis lamp.” Oddly, I have a collection of seven. I’ve often wondered about the complete lack of subtelety in this design.
http://antiques.goantiques.com/search/images.jsp?id=208956
http://www.rubylane.com/ni/shops/autumnantiques/iteml/2163920
http://www.rubylane.com/ni/shops/eastherscollectablestwo/iteml/EA-0237