Craig McNamara writes

Last week, in the New York Times Sunday Magazine , columnist Rob Walker tries to unravel (yes, that's a pun) the "Snuggie" phenomenon. A quick refresher (as if you really needed one; The Snuggie has become as culturally ubiquitous as pet rocks of the 1970's): Walker begins: Perhaps you’ve heard of the Snuggie — you know, the blanket with sleeves. Or rather, a blanket with sleeves: the Slanket, the Freedom Blanket, the Book Blanket are all quite similar, and all predated the Snuggie. But why the Snuggie? Surely no one thought that the startling success of this oddity — sales topping $60 million — was a story of innovation, or an engineering or design breakthrough. One theory is that the Snuggie has caught on because it’s comforting — as if, in these recessionary times, we have become a nation of Linuses... A second theory holds, more prosaically, that when rates for television commercials fell as mainstream advertisers started pulling back, infomercial-style peddlers ...

When an art form -- even an "illegitimate" one, like advertising -- has been around long enough, imitation and appropriation can happen unknowingly and probably, inevitably. Case in point: This 1952 wine ad, employing an artistic illustration to impart sophistication and distinctiveness: An approach surprisingly similar to the ads of Absolute Vodka some 30 years later:

  Let's see that compact workstation close up: Look!  It no longer takes up a whole floor!  Now that's progress!

Those who decry the encroachment of advertising on public spaces (and public surfaces), may have been particularly disheartened when this commercial began appearing last March: Rolling Rock Moonvertising: Launch - Watch more Funny Videos Not to worry, though.  This time, it was all a gag -- unlike, sadly, the selling of naming rights of stadiums.  However, as the New York Times later pointed out, "moonvertising" wasn't as far-fetched as it seemed: According to Jim Garvin, the chief scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, moonvertising is possible, if impractical for a number of reasons. While scientists have bounced lasers off the moon, they illuminated an area only about the size of a tennis court. “In order for an advertisement to be seen by people on earth,” Garvin says, “the laser light would need to cover an area about half the land size of Africa,” a challenge because the moon’s surface is dark and fairly nonreflective. So, all things considered, this 198...

A survivor of lung cancer in 1964, John Wayne went on to record a series of spots in the next decade for the American Cancer Society... Yul Brynner went him one better though, with an anti-smoking spot that ran posthumously:

An atheist-sponsored  ad campaign that started running on British buses last fall: "Probably?" "Probably?" That bit of uncertainty kind of undercuts the message, doesn't it?  If you disagree, (re)consider these famous ad campaigns:

Interesting parallel here, but in all likelihood, unintentional, and ultimately, meaningless.  Still... This photo, from today's NY Times article on the travails of computer maker, Dell: Remind you of anything?  Perhaps the shutting down of HAL in " 2001: A Space Odyssey: " Or maybe photographer Erich Schlegal is just a fan of the movie.