This Work Equip advertisement is another wacky magazine advertisement from a random Japanese magazine. It’s just mindboggling what the designers must have thought when they composed this advertisement. Let’s go over all those texts in the advertisement!
City after dark is our stage!
You look so fine tonight!
Let our dreams run all through the night
I’m your heroin
May I sit next to you?
We’re the real Rock’n Rollers
Come with us, Equip!
You, get off!
American Dream, you are going to be us
I’m quite puzzled by the I’m your heroin May I sit next to you? I could interpret this in various ways. Also, by the absence of a female person in this advertisement, the meaning of heroin makes me fear the worst!
In all seriousness, I do get the general theme of the advertisement. Work Equip is normally associated with Japanese Domestic Market cars, like the Skyline, Chaser or Cresta. Perhaps the marketing department thought there was some growth to be gained from conquering the American Musclecar market, so why not target it towards that audience? Of course, the black Pontiac Trans Am was the pinnacle of American muscle around 1982, so you need one of those!
The wheels displayed in the advertisement are the original Equip wheel, the Negative (so the inverse of the Equip), the Excel Spinning and the new Spirit 44.
Equip often advertised with the American Dream / Rock’n Roll tag lines and every advertisement had different bands featured. The people in the advertisement are the singer and other band members of the Japanese Rock’n Roll band Serika with Dog (セリカ・ウィズ・ドッグ) and in 1982 they were still an underground band. They only scored their first hit Lady X in 1983. I found this old recording of the band performing on Japanese television in 1983:
I really wonder what those designers thought when they created this advertisement. Maybe something like this: Rock’n Roll: check! US Muscle car: check! Gloomy dark alleyway: check! Some dangerous bozos: check!
Photocredit: OssanAuto
Leave a Reply