PSA: The Word ‘Flick’ Is Dangerous In All-Caps: Cold Start

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I feel like I’ve talked a lot about typography this week but it’s an important thing, and if you don’t believe me, then just look up there at that old 1949 Hillman Minx ad. Sure, a light-touch gearshift is a great thing! If it works with the mere action of a fingertip, that’s fantastic, so why not tout it? Why not come up with an alliterative name that conveys the very idea of this easy finger-actuation! With word that implies a cavalier, easy finger motion – flick! Finger-Flick! It’s perfect, right? Well, maybe. Until you write it in all caps, in which case I think even the Pope himself is just going to read that as FINGER FUCK and giggle, into his vestments.

Here’s the full page:

Cs Minx Ad

That Opticurve windshield sounds kinda hot, too.

The Minx was a funny dowdy little car; this look was new for 1949 and was fairly up-to-date with enclosed-fender pontoon styling – in fact, it’s a Raymond Loewy design! These were popular little economy cars, and made all of 37 hp from their 1265cc engines, so I don’t think you’d have trouble seeing one because of them whizzing by too fast.

But did no one look at this ad from, like five feet away? Did these places not routinely pull in like a dozen 13 year-old boys to review things and see what made them giggle? Is that not a common practice in the industry? It should be.

Because if there’s a human alive who doesn’t look at this ad and stifle a giggle at Finger-Fuck Gearshift, I haven’t met them. And maybe I don’t want to.

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Mercedes Streeter

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79 thoughts on “PSA: The Word ‘Flick’ Is Dangerous In All-Caps: Cold Start”

  1. I had the pleasure of visiting Fiji some years back. In November, the Christmas decorations hit the stores–of which there are several on every block of every town, and quite a few in between. Fiji speaks BBC English, among other languages, so what we’d call “Christmas lights” are “Flicking lights”.

    Keeping a straight face while walking down a street lined with signs announcing that “WE HAVE YOUR FUCKING LIGHTS!” and “FUCKING LIGHTS ARE HERE!” wasn’t easy.

    Of course, trying to keep a straight face in a country where everyone sounds like a Monty Python player wasn’t that easy, either.

      1. I was actually asked by a vendor “What, you don;t want to ‘aggle?” That really capped off the Monty Python feel.

        If you ever have the chance, BTW, visit Fiji. Beautiful islands, wonderful people–even if they do sound like MPPs.

    3. Oh man I love the South Pacific islands. Fiji was my most recent, but I spent a significant amount of time in French Polynesia, Cook Islands, and Tonga as a kid. Probably my favorite part of the world

  2. When I was a kid, I always giggled at the end credits of “Barney Miller” who had a producer named Theodore Flicker. They used an all-caps handwritten font, and yep. Same thing.

    2. Favorite poorly kerned sign: note taped to a credit card terminal at the supermarket checkout (the kind with a wired stylus for a digitized signature): PENIS BROKEN. USE FINGER.

  6. If one believes the FLICKS in all caps was an intentional double entendre, which I do, the rest of the ad copy contains other naughty references. I envision it was a boring day at the ad agency Biggles & Broadstreet, and the copywriters wanted to see how far they could go before being called out for their randy references.

  7. Many years ago, a previous priest at our church did a nice movie night thing for parents and kids to come watch a movie in the fellowship center. He came up with a logo with a bold, all caps, block letter font and called it “FRIDAY FLICKS WITH FATHER“. It looked fine when it was large, but sometimes they shrunk it down in the church bulletin, making it look really, really bad. I think quite a few people noticed it, but no-one really brought it up and it ran that way for years. Years! And now I’m probably going to hell for mentioning it and for previously laughing to myself every time I saw it.

  9. You should always wear your optigrab glasses when driving with an opticurve windshield.
    (the innovation that earned Steve Martin’s character his first fortune in ‘The Jerk’)

  12. I have to believe someone did that intentionally.
    It’s like naming a restaurant “Phở Q”.
    Somebody noticed it and giggled before not putting a stop to it.

      4. We has a Phở King nearby for a while too. There’s a long standing place in town called the King’s Noodle. I think it only exists to bring out the adolescent in me.

  14. In eighth grade I was actually suspended from my absurd religious school for writing FLICK in my all-caps comic-strip style in a poem about what a mean girl did with her boogers. Somehow they figured that “pick” and “f*ck” would have made sense in a rhyme. I had never used the F word in my life but would spitefully make it a regular habit after that. F*CK F*CK F*CK lol.

  18. As a “gentleman” in his 50’s, I don’t think they needed 13 year olds to look at the poster. If that poster was created by a man, and back then it was, it doesn’t matter how old he was at the time, he purposefully put “FLICK”.

    2. ya, a dozen years ago i left a handwritten note for one of my engineers to come to staff meeting, supplier flew into a rage when she saw my note addressed to CLINT…

    4. I used to work as a video editor at a TV network in NZ and there was a sportscaster named Clint who was a PITA to work with in the edit suite. No surprise that he was known as CLINT around the place…

    6. He’s in the process of touching the tip of his thumb to the tip of his pointer finger on his left hand to simulate a hole which he will then stick the outstretched finger on his right hand into, obviously.

    6. Well, if you think of the shifter as the finger, there are videos on the internet that will demonstrate it for you, uhh, or so I have been told.

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