This film is part of Free

It all Depends Which Way You Look at It (Solidox Advert)

Solidox toothpaste is the punchline to a series of questions concerning how things look from various angles.

Advert 1941 3 mins

Overview

A refreshingly quirky approach to advertising, which doesn’t reveal the product being advertised - Solidox toothpaste - until the final few seconds. The rest comprises a witty exploration of how things can look radically different depending on your particular viewpoint at the time, or that of a baby, a cow, a milkmaid, a cricketer, a snail, or even an inanimate object such as a glass of beer or railway sleeper. The punchline comes when a dentist’s mirror show us a rear view of a pretty smile.

Presenter Eric Barker (1912-90) was a popular comedy actor. At the time this film was made, he was most successful on radio and the stage, sometimes in partnership with his wife Pearl Hackney. After the War he’d become a very familiar face on the large and small screen, where The Eric Barker Half-Hour ran from 1951-3. Later in his career he was a regular in the early Carry On films, specialising in playing irritatingly officious authority figures. He was also a comic novelist whose work was praised by P.G. Wodehouse, and was briefly the father-in-law of the actor Anthony Hopkins.

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