There’s nothing like a World’s Fair for excess, is there? Here is John Rock with his wife and 14 children at the 1964-1965 New York World’s Fair:
No, when I say “excess”, I’m not talking about the 14 kids! Those buggies are Corvettes, and that’s what you got to rent if you were imprudent enough to turn up at the fair with, say four or five kids who needed rides.
Hertz apparently had the stroller concession at this World’s Fair, and they made the most of it. So did GM, it seems. I wonder if auctioning off a quad set of these wheels today would put a significant dent in GM’s deficit?
Source: Life magazine archives
(Yeah, John Rock’s wife is unnamed in the photo captions. She only produced the kids, and that doesn’t really count. At least not in 1964.)
Although carriages and strollers turn up occasionally in parades, the execution of the floats is almost always disappointing. (Much like most cakes meant to look like baby carriages.) Here’s one float that reaches new heights in giant pram verisimilitude:
Nice work, eh? Take a look at that chassis! And the body detail? Superb! The shopping net’s a nice touch, too.
From the Karlovy Vary (Czech Republic) International Film Festival site.
So lethal-looking, but so determinedly inventive:
It’s the Superstroller, and it replaces a ton of household stuff that’s probably cluttering up your life even as you read this. Here’s the list of things you could do without, if only this were 1947 and you owned a Superstroller:
- Infant toilet adapter seat
- Car seat
- Jumper chair
- Potty training chair
- Car bed
- Stroller
- Bassinet
- High chair
- Baby carriage
- Shopping cart
- Wheelbarrow
- Golf cart
- Hand truck
But don’t take my word for it. Here’s a photo of the goods, all lined up impressively:
Just in case you don’t recognize some of these crucial pieces of equipment, my list starts at the lower left and goes clockwise around the photo.
Here it is in the family car:
Here’s dad, using it for work:
and leisure:
Sadly, it’s no longer 1947, and the Superstroller has gone the way of dad’s pipe. If you’d like your baby to ride around in a cart that has recently moved the compost, you’ll have to look elsewhere.
Source: Life magazine archives
Helen Levitt died on April 3, 2009 at 95 years of age. What does the life of this US photographer have to do with prams, you ask? Well, nothing and everything. There was a time, pre-air conditioning, pre-television, when people lived on city streets: elders on porches, babies in large buggies, children on sidewalks or literally playing in the street. Helen Levitt documented those days.
Levitt took her tiny camera with its faked-out lens — designed so that she could make pictures while not looking directly at her subjects — and recorded that life, in the 1930s and 1940s.
So here’s the relevant picture, taken by Levitt around 1940, in New York:
. . . along with a nod to the passing of Helen Levitt and of old-style US baby carriages and their place in our shared social history.
Read Melissa Block’s essay about Levitt on NPR.
Stroller purchase advice, from the [Semya].name post “We Select the Carriage“:
However, what it is necessary precisely for you in order not to be disappointed in the carriage after several days?
(Yes, we here at The Pram Museum Blog love Babelfish. Totally.) Or, if you prefer, in the original Russian:
Что же нужно именно вам, дабы не разочароваться в коляске через несколько дней?
Apparently, this is what you need:
No, I don’t know where to buy it, and it’s not mentioned in the article. But I WOULD buy one, if I could. Totally.
It’s more like a “torture device”:
Doesn’t matter whether I pretend to be that poor kid, or the doubled-over mom. Either way, the longer I look, the more achy I feel.
From the Modern Mechanix blog, in the August 1950 issue of Popular Mechanics.