When there’s no man around … you go to a phone booth to call one. That seems to be part of the message of what would today be considered a sexist Goodyear Tires commercial from 1960. The 1-minute piece includes a brief moment where a woman, stranded on a rainy highway on account of a busted tire, finds a phone booth to call for help. Or does she? I found this over at archive.org.

The number shown on the phone is 311-555-2368, a fictitious phone number commonly seen in advertisements where telephones were depicted. That number saw wide use over the years, appearing in The Rockford Files, The Bionic Woman, and numerous other television shows and movies.

The commercial starts off looking not so much like a tire commercial but more like an intro to a pulp fiction novel: WHEN THERE’S NO MAN AROUND… This screenshot looks like a cover for a cheesy romance novel.

The point of this commercial seems to be that the woman would not have blown a tire, and would thus not have had to suffer the indignity of finding a payphone on such a dark and rainy night, if she had used Goodyear’s Double Eagle “Tire In a Tire”. That claim seems… debatable.

I don’t know if my perspective on the matter means much but with the exception of pumping gas and maybe changing the windshield wipers my mother categorically refused to do any work on the cars she owned. She unapologetically said that was men’s work, as were things like mowing the lawn and cleaning the pool.

If my mother’s attitudes reflected a broader 1960s mindset than this ad campaign should be seen simply as a reflection of the times, not a sexist jab. No self-respecting advertiser would attempt anything like this today, unless it was meant as some kind of a joke.

It looks like the “NO MAN AROUND” print ads appeared as late as 1968. That’s a pretty long time for an ad campaign, and suggests there was no particular public outcry against these ads.

Nice phone booth!