Your Loss Is Our Gain

   Americans seem obsessed with weight. With recent studies showing that our citizens have been gaining pounds faster than the British Treasury, we now reflect back on earlier attempts to get control over our tummies. Believe it or not, there was also a concern over how to put it on as well as take it off! 

As a skinny teenager, I identified with the wimp getting sand kicked in his face by the beach bully in the Charles Atlas ads, but I never had the guts to sign up for the program.

Somehow I don't really think we need this product today. At least they're honest in admitting that it's tasteless!

Drinking milk from a fat, bovine animal seems like a strange way to lose weight.

Classic ad from the World's most "Perfectly Developed Man".

How many people have bought exercise treadmills and never used them? At least with this product you were only out $3.88 not $300 or more.

Like a magic wand, the "Spot Reducer" obeys your every wish. If only.

Ironically, Charles Atlas died from a heart attack after a run on the beach.

What a great idea! If you wear plastic pants, you will sweat so much, you'll lose weight. This amazing space-age slenderizer is so stylish, too.

It's not really clear to me how eating seaweed tablets will let me gain 5 pounds in a week.

Americans are still looking for a pill that will take off pounds without having to exercise.

With Ayds, you lose weight the way nature intended you to - without dieting or hunger. Sign me up!

Unfortunately, the Notary Public listed in the ad served 20 years in the state penitentiary for criminal hyperbole.

Yet one more pill guaranteeing weight loss. Are we really that gullible?

The Charles Atlas program for teaching good manners