CHRISTMAS: Official CADET BICYCLE SPEEDOMETER!

It's not too late to get your order in to Santa. I know you all want a Cadet bicycle speedometer. It's probably the most eye-popping mind-blowing item that could be under your tree!!!

Be maniacal about your obsession! Tell everyone over and over again until they start to sneer when you walk into a room. Drive them nuts! NUTS I TELL YOU! NUTS!!!

Put it next to dad's place at the dinner table. Remember, subtlety makes you weak. We don't want to appear weak around Christmas. You'll be the talk of your block as they cart you away!

Just imagine making your folks turn gray before their time!

And oh yeah, getting a bike under the tree is nice, but a speedometer is OUT OF THIS WORLD! And a magical tissue floating in front of your sister is just the best!

Click on image to see it larger.

SOURCE: February 1964 She's Josie.

Manufactured by the Stewart-Warner Corporation:

Stewart-Warner is a US manufacturer of vehicle instruments, a.k.a. gauges. The company was founded as Stewart & Clark Company in 1905 by John K. Stewart. Their speedometers were used in the Ford Model T. In 1912 John Stewart joined with Edgar Bassick to make vehicle instruments and horns. Bassick owned Alemite Co and Stewart had bought the Warner Instrument Company, thus the name was changed to Stewart-Warner Corporation. The company started in Chicago and built a manufacturing plant on Diversey Parkway. The building kept expanding and finally covered one-million square feet (93,000 m²) and six floors. They also made radios and refrigerators, and produced the ubiquitous "zerk" grease fitting, named after its inventor, associated with the company. In the last years of the company's Chicago factory, it owned a number of aging six-spindle Brown & Sharpe and New Britain screw machines.

They also made heat exchangers starting in the 1940s under the "South Wind Division", but since then it became independent of its parent. They still use the Stewart-Warner name, and the web site is hyphenated: http://www.stewart-warner.com/

In the 1980s the company was bought by BTR plc who in the early 1990s decided to relocate to Juarez, Mexico and Stewart-Warner was taken over by another management team. In early 1998 Stewart-Warner was bought by Datcon Instrument Company (later renamed to Maxima Technologies), but kept the Stewart-Warner brand. (SOURCE: Wikipedia)

Now that I've got the speedometer I want those tassle thingies that went on the handle bars. I want my Huffy decked out.

So, WHAT DO YOU THINK THEY'RE DOING?

Even today when I first see this ad I think, "Cool, wrist radios that allow me to talk to other kids!" This would have solved a lot of problems during childhood when my best friend and I were sick at the same time. Instead of cutting letters out of construction paper and holding them up to our bedroom windows at night while shinning a flashlight at them in a futile attempt to spell out words, window to window, and generally getting sleepy before either of us ever managed to spell out a complete sentence...talking into our wrists would have been A LOT easier.

Click on image to see it larger.

From the February 1964 "She's Josie" comic book published by Radio Comics.

Ahhhh, but no, this is not what they're selling. Read the copy. Even if the ad makes it look like these kids are talking to each other, what you've really got is just a small transistor radio. I'm betting it was made in Japan, which at that time generally meant it was junk. Boy how times have changed.

I would love to know of anyone who ever bought one of these. I wonder if any still exist or did kids stomp on them when they arrived, angry that they'd been "duped" by a company called Honor House. I cannot find any information about Honor House other than a lot of other ads for junk toys which most surely disappointed every child who anxiously waited by their mailbox for their special delivery.