Although print magazines are fading in popularity thanks to web-based versions, they still exist in a multitude of categories, just has they have for over a century. The business model of print magazines has been pretty stable the whole time; most of them make their money by printing advertisements. The key to that, of course, is that most magazines are topical — if you’re interested in fishing, you’d buy the fishing magazine, and advertisers who have fishing-related products buy ads in it.
This system thrived throughout the 20th century. One slight snag, though, was always that some advertisers saw a loophole: they could also place ads for nutty products that for one reason or another could be made to look appealing to a targeted group of people, but didn’t work, were nothing more than hoaxes, or in the worst cases were flat-out fraudulent.
If you read some of the magazines dedicated to personal health and fitness in the first half of the 1900s (doesn’t it seem a bit odd to refer to “the 1900s”?) you might happen across an advertisement for a product that would help you achieve optimum pandiculation, which in turn would make you healthier and happier. Although, having bought the thing, you would no longer qualify as wealthier.
One of the ads, from sometime before 1942, read (in part): “Pandiculate for Health! Be well, young, strong. Fifteen glorious minutes on [the] Pandiculator [is] better than two hours in [the] gymnasium. Refreshes, rejuvenates, helps retain youth, energy, vigor, vim.” It sounds like a regular miracle cure. Which it would have been, had it worked.
One of the keys to ads like this is obfuscatory language. Nobody knew what “pandiculate” meant, but it sounded long and vaguely based on one of those old-timey languages those egghead doctors and researchers toss around, so it must be pretty important. Right? Right?!?
“Pandiculate” is a real word. It’s vanishingly obscure, but it really is based on one of those old-timey languages. In this case, it comes from the Latin word “pandiculatus”, which means to stretch yourself. “Pandiculation” is nothing more than stretching, like you might do when you first get out of bed. And the “Pandiculator”, which started to be marked back in 1914? It’s a frame that you lie down on, attach straps around your feet and chest, then use a lever to make it pull your feet. It’s an updated version of the medieval rack (which, by the way, was used to torture people).
By the way, how do we know the Pandiculator ad must have appeared prior to 1942? Because early in 1942 the US Post Office banned the vendor from using the mail to promote or ship the device on the basis that the whole thing was nothing but a fraud. It probably didn’t bother the marketers too much though. I can imagine them just getting up, completing their morning pandiculation, and moving on to their next scam…I mean, product idea.
