Mike Nelson: "They want their little gold jacket back."
Century 21 Calling is a 1962 stealth advertisement for telephone technology (much like Once Upon a Honeymoon). It aired as a short feature with Mystery Science Theater 3000 episode 906, The Space Children.
It was directed by Jerry Fairbanks and features ample footage of the 1962 Seattle World's Fair.
Tropes:
- Chewing the Scenery: The two... teenagers mincing about the fair, nearly bowling people over.
- It's clear a lot of people weren't aware of the filming. A woman shoots them a Death Glare when they force their way to the front of a crowd.
- Mighty Whitey: Heavily implied by the short, as the two teens treat various ethnic persons at the Fair like dolls.
- Perhaps justified, as it was the World's Fair, and those people were there as live demonstrations of their cultures, including their clothing and accessories.
- Landmark of Lore: The then-new Space Needle, Monorail and what is now the Pacific Science Center.
- Tech Marches On: The prototype smart-house technology that turned the heat and lights on for you when you signaled it ahead of your arrival... from a pay phone.
- Amazingly, as of the mid-2010s (more than fifty years later!) this particular prediction was surprisingly accurate, with the advent of home automation. The only real difference is that it's controlled by a smartphone rather than a payphone, but the concept is otherwise the same.
- Interestingly, virtually every technology featured in this short has gone from new and exciting to commonplace.
- The Voiceless: Nearly so. The two main characters nearly never speak, having only a couple lines each when demonstrating the push button phones.
- Zeerust: Zig-zagged; a number of the then-new advances have become ubiquitous. Other uses (such as phoning the house in order to start the oven) have been found too fanciful.
- On the other hand, these days you can email your home printer and tell it to start churning stuff out, which is the same thing in a different room.
