Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: WEDNESDAY, January 12, 1994                   TAG: 9401120114
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

BOMB SHELTER AD RULES JOIN COLD WAR HISTORY

Though the items probably were big in the 1950s and 1960s, when Cold War paranoia swept the country, the FTC decided unanimously that "there was no regular market for these products."

Joel Brewer, an FTC attorney who worked on eliminating the guidelines, said there was little for the staff to work from because records on the original rule-making have been lost. All there was to go on was the old Federal Register notice and a few other clues. It was "sort of like reading a spy story," Brewer said.

He said the staff "beat the bushes" to find survivalists and others who could comment on whether the agency should keep the guides. They came up with a few manufacturers, two state public health officials and two radiation experts.

One comment the agency received: "With Russia . . . in disarray, you couldn't sell a fallout shelter or radiation instrument to the public even if you promised immortality in your advertising."

That was just what the FTC was trying to prevent when it issued its guides in 1961 and 1963. This was serious stuff, and the FTC wanted to make sure that false promises would not be made. "Most consumers would have little basis for themselves evaluating . . . the features of blast shelters," the agency said.

In its directive, the FTC told the industry it could not mislead buyers about the protection a shelter offered or use "scare tactics" such as "horror pictures calculated to arouse unduly the emotions of prospective shelter buyers."