Generation Y was lied to about the future, sure – still no Back To The Future style hoverboards, people – but just think about how the poor bastards who came of age in the 1950s and 60s must feel. Every single thing they read and heard was some wide-eyed appraisal of how, one day, we’d all be donning magic space pants and leg-jiggling our way to the Neptune High School prom.

It’s heartbreaking on an epic scale, then, to realise that 99% of the predictions made just didn’t come true. Like this fine little fella from a 1951 edition of Mechanix Illustrated – a piece entitled Helicopters For Everybody which paints a utopian vision that even Barack Obama would feel a bit dubious about offering up.

It’s featured as part of Modern Mechanix, a spiffing site which highlights similar such bygone idealism. Lots of other good stuff there, but nothing quite lives up to the rampant exuberance of Helicopters For Everybody. Seriously. Just say it to yourself. Helicopters. For. Everybody.

Fifty-eight years on, has humanity created a better manifesto?

Modern Mechanix