Book 'Em: Hardboiled Ads Back W.B. Mason

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Baldwin & Stone’s latest television push for office-supply chain W.B. Mason spoofs hardboiled crime dramas of the 1940s.

One spot opens with a voiceover introducing W.B. Mason’s “low-price assurance detectives,” who stake out the parking lot of a “superstore” in search of those guilty of spending too much. When they see a familiar-looking, glamorous woman getting into her car, they follow her out of the lot and pull her over.

After accusing the woman of “reckless purchasing and spending to endanger,” one of the detectives says to his partner, “She’s a repeat offender —book her!” The cop hurls a Mason catalog through her window.



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