Great days in advertising

Everybody has days like this -- and my sympathy goes out to the brass at Kalmbach Publishing, purveyors of excellent railroading magazines such as Trains and Model Railroader. Yesterday their promotion people sent out e-mail subscription ads featuring a large photo of a man and small boy walking down the middle of a set of well-polished rails.

What, of course, was missing was the locomotive roaring around an unseen curve at speed and . . .

To its credit, scarcely two hours after broadcasting the ad, the company issued a follow-up e-mail frankly apologizing for the ad and firmly stating its commitment to safety on the railroad.

Still, one wonders what the promotion department was thinking. Perhaps the culprit who came up with the ad was a veteran of one of Kalmbach's non-railroad magazines, such as Birder's World or Art Jewelry.

Meanwhile, the following commercial seems to have tickled the fan- . . . fan- . . . uh, fancy of a great many YouTube watchers in the last few days: