Wednesday, June 09, 2010

Monsanto Souvenir Brochure

The Monsanto Home of the Future was a charming combination of futuristic styling and classic mid-century design that added up to AWESOME. Here is a vintage brochure (or is it a flyer?) - purchased for $1 at a store in Minnesota - with some great color interiors and lots of info.

At night, colored lighting adds loads of charm and a bit of showmanship to the house, a nice contrast to the gleaming white appearance it has during the day.


It looks like somebody has made a real effort to warm up the interiors with a lot of bold hues (compared to earlier incarnations). Raspberry, tangerine, aqua, and vivid green all help to make the house look less sterile and more livable.


Here are some more great color photos (lots and lots of color!). Again, compare that kitchen to this early photo or this postcard, it hardly looks like the same place. Don't you wish you had some deep, soft Acrilan carpet to squish your toes in?


Sorry about the upside-down part - think of this as a rare excuse to stand on your head.


I hope you've enjoyed today's brochure!

9 comments:

Chiana_Chat said...

Not only did I stand on my head, I flipped hehe

But back to the post. ;) Very nice lighting scheme, me likey. Is that the rarely seen, short lived Gazebo Of The Future? (tent in the 3rd image)

The older promos: was the model to be included in houses of the future? Nice feature...

Talk about re-decorating! But it's funny how the older is more "modern" in that stark contemporary way while the redoing is older, relatively more dated stylistically (though more "livable" I'd agree).

They add a plug for their "fascinating" Monsanto exhibit too I see.

The night and living room pic (top of 2nd pic) at 1600 pixies er pixels wide or would make a couple of cool desktops! Too bad Disney doesn't offer stuff like that online...

Fantastic find and thanks so much for sharing it Maj!

Vintage Disneyland Tickets said...

Neato Brochure/Flyer! I will admit the earlier colors look better to me, I remember those bold hues all over the place in the late 60's, meh...

Never seen that Gazebo Of The Future, was the really at the park?

Awesome post - thanks!

Connie Moreno said...

I can't stop to look at these pictures but I HAD to post that I'm foaming at the mouth!!! OMG!!! Like my Governor says: "I'll be back".

Connie Moreno said...

OK, I'm back....
Super fantastical gorgeous to infinity! Here’s a “fun fact”. My ex-husband worked for the company that was consulted when the (stupid) decision was made to tear down the House of the Future. He told me that he was called out to the site because they couldn’t destroy the thing. My ex said that he stood there and watched a gigantic wrecking ball hit the House of the Future over and over again...it would just bounce off! Finally the decision was made to use chain saws and cut it to pieces. (I knew I shouldn’t have married him!)

Nancy said...

this is so cool....i really want to live in one of these.

one of those posts that makes me smile and frown at the same time, if that is possible

thanks for these beauties! :-)

Major Pepperidge said...

Chiana, I agree... it did look more "modern" before they added the fake wood and harvest gold.

Tim, you should have seen my parent's house when they first moved into it... the ugliest colors/carpets ever!

Connie, thanks for the story! If your ex had chained himself to the House of the Future to protect it, then you would have known he was a keeper!! ;-)

TokyoMagic! said...

I'm a day late on commenting, but that Patio/Gazebo structure was converted into a souvenir stand and remained standing in that spot until the nineties when it was replaced by the rotating shell for Ariel. Unfortunately, it was probably unceremoniously demolished at that time.

Chiana_Chat said...

...but wasn't completely unnoticed. Thanks for the detail on that TokyoMagic!

Anonymous said...

Ironic that now, here in the future, (the future of the past anyway), building construction is one of the most traditional and hidebound of human activities.

If architecture had progressed at the pace of communications, we would all be living like George Jetson.

I blame the pursuit of fashion. People won't give up their images of the hallowed past. Maybe thats OK.

Thanks for these great pics.

JG