Tuesday, March 9, 2010

A Pair O' Ramas


In order to make anything sound catchier in the 50's and 60's marketers could just add the suffix "-rama" to it, and all of a suddent it sounded much cooler. The top postcard is the Bowl-a-Rama Bowling Lanes in South Portland, Maine. A cinderblock building with an empty parking lot is much more inviting with -Rama tacked onto the end.
The bottom postcard is a barge-based exhibit by the New York Trap Rock Corporation, one of the country's largest producers of crushed stone. Yep, there's no way you can generate interest in the wonder of crushed stone unless you throw in a little -Rama to liven it up!

11 comments:

Chris Overstreet said...

Neatorama!

Sheila @ A Postcard a Day said...

I immediately had to find out where orama came from and found a wonderful page with a longer list of oramas than you could ever imagine!

Postcardy said...

I didn't find the list, but I found this definition:

-orama definition

-orama (ə ram′ə, ə rä′mə)
a greater-than-usual number, volume, or variety of a specified thing: used to form commercial names and other words for events and displays sportorama

viridian said...

Oh my Lord - these are the kind of postcards I love. you think - why? Why have a postcard of a cinderbox building and an asphalt parking lot?

Beth Niquette said...

Those are actually pretty cool.

Happy PFF!

Christine H. said...

I'm liking Riverama a lot!

Mary said...

So that makes this Postcard Friendship Friday-orama!

Not quite as catchy I guess.

Legacy of Love said...

Wow those are about 50 years old. Really makes you think..

Very interesting,
God Bless,
julie

Irene said...

Just out of curiosity, what was the significance of the two postcards, advertising? tourist attraction or what? Love the ORAMA history. Right now I'm trying to figure out what my friend and I could do if we went to Casino Rama if we lost our $20 gambling limit, you see Casino Rama is on an Indian Reserve, not too much shopping or touristy things to do if you run out of money and your bus isn't leaving for another 8 hours. Thanks for playing.

Max said...

Glad to see this generated so much interest! This has been a fun but difficult postcard topic to pursue!

Lyneen said...

Fab-o-rama!!!! I am going to look for RAMA cards when I am looking for postcards... Happy PFF!