Let's take the positive view and say that humans will not only survive another hundred years but that our future selves will have enough food, shelter and free time to continue sifting our collective historical past, and that one of these sifters will develop an interest in surfing, leading her to surf products in general and O'Neill Wetsuits in particular.

She will quickly note that O'Neill was by an order of magnitude the Big Daddy of surf wetsuit manufacturers. And because her mind is nimble and inquisitive, she will ask Why? Why was O'Neill the Big Daddy?

Maybe there will be enough product reviews or testimonials or other pieces of evidence to determine that O'Neill's product was better designed and built than those of its competitors.

But I think our surf-curious researcher will more likely come to the conclusion that O'Neill achieved Big Daddyness by destroying the competition, month after month, year after year, in the marketing game. Best logo. Best surf team. Sexy and mildly controversial ads. That huge O'Neill-stamped hot-air balloon owning the skies at premier surf events. Hell, company founder Jack O'Neill gouged an eye out while surfing and turned 

"The Factory" is the name of that madcap black-and-white cartoon at the top of the page. It was commissioned in 1973 and drawn by Santa Cruz skate-world artist Jim Phillips. The ad ran double-page in SURFER the following year, and in 

 the year after that (the world moved a lot slower in the 1970s); the version above is from 

, which explains "Colouring" instead of "Coloring."

Everybody loved this ad. Kids, especially.

Phillips later said it was Pat O'Neill (Jack's son) who asked that the ad show the O'Neill factory, but I don't think there was much of a directive beyond that, and Jim came back with something that was two parts 

, one part "Sgt. Pepper's," and one part Rick Griffin.

"The Factory" wasn't necessarily better than other O'Neill ads, but it was a total one-off, different from anything the company did before or since, and looking back I wonder if somebody (Pat?) suggested that the company needed to do something to lighten the mood.

Possibly I'm reading more into this than it deserves, but the surf scene in general, and especially in America, had been skewing heavy for the previous five years, and it was time to move on. Intentional or not, "The Factory" helped surfing regain its sense of humor. If you were 13, like I was in early 1974, you spent two hours scanning every square inch of Phillips' riotous O'Neill ad, and no time at all looking at the ad on the next page with the cosmic polarized duotone surf pic and the quoted Kahlil Gibran header.

In other words, we will someday recall O'Neill Wetsuits' dominant surf-world rank during the Pre-Viral-Meltdown Age and evaluate thusly:

The product was good. The marketing was better.

"THE O'NEILL COLORING CONTEST" - MORE MARKETING MAGIC FROM ONE-EYED KING JACK O'NEILL

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