Funny Vintage Ads (21)

Advertising has always been an interesting way to look at history. But when you see these vintage advertisements, the past seems a lot stranger than you thought.

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Ahhhh, the perfect Christmas centerpiece. Every Oscar Mayer cured meat you can think of, along with parsley and huckleberry leaves, pinned to a tree made out of a kitchen funnel and styrofoam.

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A cheroot is a cylindrical cigar with both ends clipped during manufacture. Since cheroots do not taper, they are inexpensive to roll mechanically, and their low cost makes them popular. Lunsford Richardson, 1854–1919, was an American pharmacist from Selma, North Carolina, and the inventor of Vick's VapoRub.
 
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The first portable handheld hairdryer was invented in 1920, but that didn't stop some intrepid soul from building this massive industrial-strength version sometime soon after.

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"Sagging chins are lifted and unbecoming wrinkles are smoothed out around the lips, cheeks and forehead... It is worn overnight, removed in morning."
Also doubles as a torture device!

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Long before child safety seats were invented, there were motor cribs or car bassinets so that mothers didn't have to hold their babies during car rides. They were totally unsafe and this one looks like it would pivot and launch the baby into the air if the mother slams on the brakes.

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"Start him young -- to prevent falling" ... sales!
Lucky Tiger began in the 1920’s, in Kansas City, Missouri, in the basement of barber Benjamin Clarke and is still being sold today.

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  "As quick as a wink, a few sprinkles of Amolin will guard your freshness and wholesomeness all day long!"
Ads targeting women attempt to create or amplify feelings of fear, social estrangement, rejection, anxiety, and paranoia in order to sell products.

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 "No chance of dropping cigarette while fatigued" Apparently the manufacturer thought it too burdensome to simply hold a cigarette between one’s fingers, so they made this little device.
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 "Go gay with Jell-O -- today!"

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 Loftis Bros & Company was established in Chicago in 1858, and in this 1905 ad they claim to be the "oldest, the largest, and the most reliable credit retailers of Diamonds, Watches, and Jewelry in the world."

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"Opens at the top . . . cold can't spill out -- and how beautifully efficient it looks in your home!"
"Beautifully efficient???" Can you imagine trying to fit this monster in your kitchen?
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The Gibson Girl was created by Charles Dana Gibson in the late 1890's. During a 20-year period, she became every woman's ideal and every man's dream. Gibson's "American girl to all the world" was not only stunningly tall, thin, and beautiful, but also an independent and well-educated young woman poised to take a more visible and active role in the public arena than women of preceding generations.
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The human mouth is one of the dirtiest parts of the body, but that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. A human mouth is host to hundreds of species of bacteria, many of which simply live there and don’t really cause any damage. If any disease-causing bugs get into our mouths, these “good” bacteria outgrow them and starve out the competition to make sure that we don’t get sick.

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Dr. Guertin's Nerve Syrup was a patent medicine sold by Kalmus Chemical Company, promoted as a treatment for diseases of the nervous system, and particularly as an epilepsy cure.  Although it was sold under the name of Dr. A. L. Guertin, an associate linked to the company, the concoction was the creation of Otto Kalmus, who had previously engaged in a mail scam offering epilepsy treatment, before it was banned as fraudulent by the Postal Service in 1908.
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Until the 1930s, very few homes had built-in kitchen cabinets. A typical kitchen contained a sink, stove, an icebox and a Hoosier cabinet. They were called Hoosier Cabinets because the first was made in Indiana in 1898, by the Hoosier Manufacturing Company. Hoosier style cabinets were also made by dozens of other companies, and most were manufactured in the Hoosier State or nearby.
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Prior to the invention of the first self-contained electric refrigerator by Frigidaire in 1916, many American households stored their perishable food in an insulated "icebox" that was usually made of wood and lined with tin or zinc. The ice man came once a week and delivered a fresh block of ice.
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The "Latest in Water Saving VELOCIPEDE Shower Baths." Rinse the dirt off and then put it right back on again with the same dirty water!

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 Aside from the sheer bulk of this mirror system and the difficulty of deploying it on an active battlefield, there's the fact that one bullet would shatter it.

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 Yes, ladies, there’s nothing like ceiling-mounted fluorescent lighting to accentuate every wrinkle on your face and the bags under your eyes.
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 "Your future home may have electric master panels like this."
Yes, it's called an iPhone.

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"The Weil Reducing Belt made of special reducing rubber, produces exactly the same results as a skilled masseur, only quicker and cheaper."
You won't lose any weightwith a reducing belt, or trimming belt, or abs belt. The only thing that will be lighter is your wallet.

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Andrews Liver Salts, a laxative and antacid, was first sold from 1894, by William Henry Scott and William Murdoch Turner in England. The trademark "Andrews Liver Salt" was registered in 1909. In the 1930s, advertisements recommended taking the salts for "inner cleanliness".
 Andrews Liver Salts is now owned by GlaxoSmithKline.

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Jell-O brand powder first hit the market in 1897, and over the years their advertising featured many recipes.  In this ad from 1959, readers are told that the gelatin protein that is produced when animal bones, connective tissues and other similar meat by-products are boiled makes a delicious soft drink.

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“It’s A Lifesaver,” and it’s also “Fit For A King.”
A 30-oz bottle of lemon-lime soda, similar to 7-UP won't sober you up, but it might help with alcohol induced dehydration.

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 During WW2, the US Army suggested that young men looking for a little "action" join the army.
"You'll like the splendid new equipment -- cars, trucks, tanks, planes, guns -- that you'll be using."

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The 19th Amendment, ratified on August 18, 1920, finally granted women the right to vote. Men reacted to women's demand for the vote badly then, and treat powerful women in politics just as badly now. 
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Women who had worn corsets since childhood or adolescence probably had weaker abdominal muscles and might have benefited from proper support, but maternity corsets were not specially designed for support. Instead, the corsets were designed to minimize the size of the pregnant body. Maternity corsets shielded the pregnant body from view and thus provided Victorian society another means of denying women’s sexuality.

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After Pearl Harbor, the US military asked pet owners to donate their pet dogs to the war effort. Dogs for Defense was a very successful program, recruiting approximately 20,000 dogs during WW2.

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 The all vacuum tube IDA (Integro-Differential Analyzer) by
Computer Corporation of America was introduced in 1951. At a time when computers took up entire rooms, this device allowed you to "actually sit at your desk while you compute!"

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"At last the backbreaking chore of stuffing is done in minutes..." And unlike "stovetop" alternatives, the salmonella bacteria in the turkey will still pollute the stuffing and give your family food poisoning, just like the old days. 

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Funny Vintage Ads (20)

Advertising has always been an interesting way to look at history. But when you see these vintage advertisements, the past seems a lot stranger than you thought.

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Of course he won't kiss you, you have painted glaring lips!
Tangee was a technical marvel. Its tangerine shade (that gave the product its name) actually changed color after it was applied to conform to the complexion of the wearer.

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If you're really a Superman fan, why would you want to own a rock that could kill him? Kids who sent in their $2.50 plus $1.00 shipping received one or two green plastic rocks that glowed in the dark.

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"Copies Everything Electronically Dry"
so you won't get ink on your ass cheeks.

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"The Hooter" so you can "vacuum" up your cocaine.
The 1970s was a "golden age" for advertising cocaine paraphernalia, but it came to an end in the early 1980s, with increasing restrictions on advertising drug paraphernalia as part of Nancy Reagan's "Just Say No" campaign.

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"It's leap year girls! Catch your man with taste-tempting donuts."
If you really think marriage is a trap, why bother with a ball and chain? Just put the donuts in a bear trap.

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"The things women have to put up with. Most husbands, nowadays, have stopped beating their wives, but what can be more agonizing to a sensitive soul than a man’s boredom at meals."

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 In 1832 the formulation of Doan’s Pills “was the secret…of an old Quaker lady,” named Aunty Rogers, when she began sharing it with members of her community where it became known as Aunty Rogers' Kidney Cure. Dr. James Doan bought the rights to the patent medicine, and then he improved it, before marketing it throughout the country and the rest of the world.

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The Kilacold chlorine bomb was a teardrop-shaped glass ampoule containing 0.35g of chlorine gas. The patient had to break the end off to allow the gas to permeate the air of a closed room and, according to the advertising, their cold would disappear within an hour.

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 In the 1960s you had to order a book to find out how to hypnotize via TV. Now all you need to do is turn the channel to Fox News and they'll do the rest.

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Joseph C. Gayetty is credited as the inventor of modern commercially available toilet paper. "Gayetty's Medicated Paper" was sold in packages of flat sheets, medicated with aloe and watermarked with his name.

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“Tested and commended by Parents Magazine,Trimz DDT children’s room wallpaper kills flies, mosquito’s and ants on contact...” Of course the best way to protect your children from insects is to fill their room with a powerful insecticide. Just make sure they don't lick the walls

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Since the introduction of advertising, women have been objectified and used to sell products. This 1970s ad is a particularly crude example of dehumanizing and demeaning a woman by using her as a prop. Unfortunately, this is tame by today's standards, where advertisers often hyper-sexualize females and their body parts.

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Thank heavens for Castoria!, Before this miracle laxative was developed for children, the only solution for constipation was to beat the shit out of your kid with a hairbrush.

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The Brownie camera was invented by Frank A. Brownell in 1900. It was a basic cardboard box camera wrapped in imitation leather, with a simple meniscus lens that took 2 1/4-inch square pictures. One hundred thousand of them were purchased during the first year alone. The Brownie's low price and ease of use helped to make photography available to everyone, and the brownie cameras became the best-selling cameras of all-time.

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 Tomatoes stuffed with cottage cheese and mayonnaise?

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It's hard to believe air travel was ever like this, because flying today is a lot like riding a bus.
 In 1966, American Airlines ordered several Boeing 747 Astroliners; the biggest commercial airplanes at the time. But by the time American received the new aircraft in 1970, the economy was in a recession and there was too much capacity in the industry to justify 303-seat jumbos. So American pulled 50 seats off each 747 and used the free space to create a passenger lounge. They even installed a Wurlitzer piano in each lounge. Unfortunately, ticket sales didn't justify the added expense and the piano-lounge-in-the-sky era ended quickly.

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Old Gold was introduced in 1926, with the slogan "Not a cough in a carload." In 1941, the slogan was changed to "Something new has been added" a catchphrase created by comedian and cartoon voice actor Jerry Colonna, one of Bob Hope’s radio sidekicks.

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Sales of Levy’s rye bread soared in 1961 after Judy Protas, an advertising executive at Doyle Dane Bernbach created this tag line for a Jewish bakery in Brooklyn.

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This is an early 1950s advertisement offering youngsters a Buck Rogers Space Rangers Kit as a premium in conjunction with Sylvania "HaloLight" TV. "HaloLight" was muted fluorescence illumination around the border of the TV screen and was introduced by Sylvania during 1952-1953.

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In the 1940s, RCA published a guide for how male bosses should treat female employees. Men were told that “women are teachable” and that they should "avoid horseplay or “kidding”; she may resent it."

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The Keeley Institute, known for its Keeley Cure or Gold Cure, was a sanitarium that offered treatment to alcoholics from 1879 to 1965. Dr. Keeley is remembered as the first to treat alcoholism as a medical disease rather than a social vice.

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Dr. Thomas' Eclectric Oil (also sold as Excelsior Eclectric Oil) was pain relief remedy and general cure-all created by S. N. Thomas in the 1860s. The name is a portmanteau of Electricity and magnetic, evoking notions of advanced technology which didn't actually exist.

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 A lovely morning poop and suddenly she is ten pounds lighter!

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“Clothing is an extension of the fig leaf — it put our sex inside our bodies,” Cleaver told Newsweek in 1975. “My pants put sex back where it should be.”

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 Buy a Mexican dress complete with straw sombrero "imported" from Michigan.

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Thank God there is this record to free me from my parental responsibility to explain where babies come from. 

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L.T. Cooper sold patent medicines at rural medicine shows beginning in 1904. Cooper's New Discovery contained 17% alcohol and was sold as a tonic and system purifier, as well as a "worm and germ expeller." Patent medicines containing lots of alcohol were popular in "dry counties" of the South where liquor was outlawed. Cooper was arrested for fraud in 1914. 

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"Atom Chef uses a hot atomic reactor core to magically surround your food with thousands of excited, flavor-packed neutrons and delicious, wholesome protons..."
An obvious fake, but very clever. 

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 "Terrifying, Deadly, Destructive, Amazing -- THE CLAWS OF TERROR.
FREE Oriental Devil Fighting Society Certificate of Membership (suitable for framing) as an added bonus for ordering early."

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 So you put the gun in your mouth and pull the trigger to get a candy treat. What could go wrong!
The Candy Shooter Gun was first released in 1965.

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