04.17.09 VINTAGE ‘LOST’ ADS ARE PRETTY COOL

For those of you who are unfamiliar with “Lost,” the magical time-and-space-traveling island with polar bears and a sentient killer smoke cloud was settled in the 1970s by a mysterious company called the Dharma Initiative, which sought to conduct research and harvest the island’s magic to make GOLD!  GOLD!  They’ll all be richer than kings!

Actually, I’m not quite sure what the Dharma Initiative’s real purpose was, but they left behind a lot of cool old stuff on the island, as well as large stores of food, which helped Hurley stay fat throughout the seasons.  And now someone — I’m not sure if it’s a branch of ABC’s viral marketing or the work of a zealous fan — has created these vintage magazine ads for various Dharma Initiative products.  If the thumbnails here aren’t detailed enough, you can see higher resolutions at this flickr page.  The level of detail is pretty ridiculous, from the “aging” of the ads to the fact that you can see through the page to the inverted text on the other side.

There’s just one thing that bothers me… Wasn’t the Dharma Initiative, um, SECRET?  Why would a small, secretive company have magazine ads for things available only on a tiny island in the Pacific?  Okay, okay — put the pitchforks and torches away.  Your fancy vintage ads are cool, “Lost” fans.  Geeks.

(thanks to WWSM for the tip)