JF Ptak Science Books
I must say that when I first saw this advertisement for Mercedes (1924?, in the Illustrirte Zeitung from Leipzig) that I couldn't really remember seeing someone looking quite this crazy/dedicated while trying to sell something, to anyone. This is particularly so when you take a look at a similar design for Continental Tyres, except that this ad appeared 14 years or so earlier, in 1910 (and in The Illustrated London News for May 14):
Then I wondered about insane/laser eyes in general, and couldn't come up much there, either. Barney Google certainly had "goo goo googly eyes" but they weren't necessarily crazy/insane.
Superman on the other hand did have laser eyes, and sometimes he was (made to be) crazy--still not quite up to the Mercedes guy, and he wasn't trying to sell anything but himself and the comic that he was in. I think that the Mercedes Man might be in his own category, and I'm not so sure how successful this ad campaign could've been, especially in the Weimar/Schacht era in hyper-inflated Germany.
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