MADvertising: A MAD Look at 50 Years of MADison Avenue (Paperback)

~ David Shayne (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

•Hundreds of favorite MAD ad parodies

•Classic humor in a classy package

MADvertising showcases the very best of MAD’s fifty-plus years of takeoffs on Madison Avenue. Fans will thrill to hundreds of spoofs of legendary ad campaigns, plus hilarious behind-the-scenes interviews with the Usual Gang of Idiots. But wait, there’s more! Get ready for two Galleries of Sin, featuring every twist on cigarette and alcohol advertising ever done by the magazine; a section highlighting "legitimate" ads by MAD artists; a duscussion of MAD’s longtime no-advertising policy; plus (yes!) all-time favorite takeoffs on "My Fair Ad Man" and "The MAD Madison Avenue Primer." Silly, smart—and cheap!—MADvertising sells itself.

About the Author

David Shayne was an associate editor at MAD for more than five years. He attended the Warner Bros. Comedy Writer’s Workshop and has since contributed monologue jokes to Craig Kilborn as well as writing for the AMC series The Wrong Coast. He lives in Los Angeles.

Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Watson-Guptill (October 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0823030814
• ISBN-13: 978-0823030811
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 8.2 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #980,430 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Usual Gang of Idiots Needs Some Help from the Design Department, May 12, 2006

By	Bart King (Portland, Oregon) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

As a devoted MAD reader, I immediately purchased this volume when I saw it was available. I have fond memories of the MAD ad satires of my youth, and a cumulative look at this grand tradition proved to be irresistible.

MADVERTISING does offer a very enjoyable retrospective at my chuckles of yesteryear, as well as material that preceded and followed my subscription days. Naturally, the key to enjoying many of these ad satires is the witty ad copy that guys like Nick Meglin and Dick DeBartolo came up with. But despite the generous size of this book, time and again I was thwarted in my attempt to actually READ their lampoons. That's because the ads are sometimes reproduced herein at a fraction of their original size, reducing their words to micro-fonts. Dang it!

But this book does allow us to give a "hats off" to some of the magazine's illustrators and designers. Bob Clarke and (Frank) Kelly Freas in particular created artwork for MAD that was genuinely superior to the art accompanying the "real" ads of their day. In this regard, MADVERTISING does a good job reproducing their extremely clever visuals.