Reddy for a Flameless Electric Dryer – Sept. 1962

We'll close out the month with a visit from our old pal Reddy Kilowatt, who we haven't seen here on the blog since this past May.

Reddy's power was starting to flicker in the Journal by 1972. There just wasn't a need for Ohio Edison to use him to encourage more electric usage in daily ads any more. So we'll look at things from a sixty year perspective instead, and see what he was up to in 1962, when he was still at full wattage, marketing-wise.

Back on Sept. 18, 1962, Reddy was promoting one of them thar newfangled, flameless electric dryers in his Journal ad. (It looks like the ad utilizes a piece of Harry Volk clip art, the type I used at my job as a paste-up artist when I was just launching my art career.)

Since the headline mentions the 'flameless' angle of an electric dryer, I assumed that the ad copy would play up the danger of an explosion with a gas dryer. Instead, the text points out the negative aspect of line drying, including "rain, snow, soot or dirt."

I'm with Reddy on this one. I've mentioned before how I don't remember my mother ever drying our clothes on a line since we never had one. It was a common sight in the backyards of many of our neighbors, however, when I was growing up.

As for gas dryers, I had one in my first house on Nebraska Avenue. But it seemed to take forever to dry my meager laundry.

Nowadays, Reddy would be proud of me in my all-electric condo, complete with a washer dryer combo.