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Copyright Best Seal Corp. NY. NY 10013. 1971
"What you see is what you get" is an expression popularized by Flip Wilson in his performance as the drag character Geraldine in Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In in the late 1960s and on The Flip Wilson Show.
Evidence suggests that the phrase was coined in the 1940s; the earliest citation of a form of the phrase traces back to an ad for a Filmo Sportster 8mm film camera in The Charleston Gazette in November 1949:
"You just sight, press a button and what you see, you get!"
The citation of the phrase in its exact form was first seen in print from an ad for a house sale, in The Oakland Tribune, May 1966:
"So with the exception of landscaping and decorator furnishings, what you see is what you get."
Source: The meaning and origin of the expression: What you see is what you get. (n.d.). In The Phrase Finder. Retrieved from: http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/what-you-see-is-what-you-get.html.