In the last week, we’ve had a lot of fun with old snowmobiling ads.
In the Friday’s Fast Five article posted here a week ago today, we selected five ads from now-defunct snowmobile manufacturers from an issue of Snow Goer that was being worked on by the editors at the time exactly 40 years ago this summer. The reaction and page views we got both on the Snow Goer website and also on social media was overwhelming — folks loved looking at the old iron and reliving the memories.
The topic wasn’t without criticism, however. We heard from some readers who asked why we specifically excluded the big four brands from today. Others just wanted more, more, more.
Our response? We sat in our fancy offices sipping our espressos and said, “Ah shuddup, ya’ whiners – you’ll get what you get and you’ll learn to like it!” (OK, that’s a lie – we don’t have fancy offices, we aren’t espresso-sort-of-guys and we never said anything like that about our readers, but hey, we were taught in journalism school long ago to never let the facts get in the way of a story.)
So, we sharpened our focus to the current four brands (Arctic Cat, Polaris, Ski-Doo and Yamaha) and moved forward five years to an issue of Snow Goer mailed to subscribers in the fall of 1977 — an issue being worked on by the staff of Snow Goer 35 years ago this summer and featuring the 1978 snowmobiles. An El Tigre 6000 adorned the cover.
Now, one thing they didn’t teach us in journalism school was how to count, but using an abacus we figured out that we can’t do a Friday Fast Five with only four sled makers, so a Kawasaki ad snuck into this week’s Fast Five as well. Shhhhh… don’t tell the people at the Kawi plant in Nebraska that they don’t make sleds anymore; maybe they’ll spark by up the assembly line.
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