Remington Rodeo
As absurd as the concept is for a rodeo rider to use a portable typewriter on the back of a bucking bronco, imagine how foreign it must have all seemed for Swiss typewriter buyers who faced the localized version of Remington’s American ad.
Selling typewriters internationally no doubt posed many challenges for manufacturers, and it’s easy to imagine how many of the ads created using culturally skewed themes ended up being lost in translation. Was it a cost-saving measure for Remington to re-use the same artwork the world over, or just simple ignorance to global diversity?
This example of the artwork used to promote the Remington Portable by a typewriter retailer in Lausanne, Switzerland, (it’s now the site of a chocolate store), loudly praises the ultra-portable model, and lists its virtues as robustness, speed, compactness, and it being well-featured. Of course it would have to be all these things – and more – to be effective on the back of a wild animal, not to mention to be able to survive such a stunt.