Funny Vintage Ads (45)

 

 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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Girl on left: "What day is it?"
Girl on right: "Beats me. I'm on my period."

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PT Barnum bought Jumbo from the London Zoo in 1882 and earned back the money he spent in three weeks of exhibiting Jumbo in Madison Square Garden. Jumbo was hit and killed by a train in 1885, so Barnum had him stuffed and continued to exhibit him.

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 Looing a little wimpy riding a Vespa? Manspread!

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Atomic radiation can cause genetic mutations and your baby has three heads.

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"Protection for everybody against robbers, criminals, morons..."

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"Black-Daylite" was a promotional term used to describe the development of a darker color screen phosphor.

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It was once a rite of passage for farm boys to receive a rifle on their 13th or 14th birthday or for Christmas.

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Yes, you too can afford a vacation, but only if you travel by bus.

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Eye-catching or eye...sore.

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The Ludwig Drum Company was established in Chicago in 1909 by William F. & Theobald Ludwig. By 1923, Ludwig was the largest drum manufacturer in the world. Sales doubled in 1964 when The Beatles appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show with Ringo playing Ludwig Drums.

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"Electronics! Excitement! Giant Cannon launches flying jet plane! Target appears on TV screen! Radar antenna rotates, picks up beep signals, gives warning! "Aircraft spotter" talks to "Radar operator" over intercom! Also has telegraph key for code."

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In 1875, Lydia Pinkham developed an immensely popular, if questionably effective, herbal remedy for “female complaints.” It is still being sold today.

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The Reliant Regal was a small three-wheeled car manufactured from 1953 to 1973 by the Reliant Motor Company in Tamworth, England. Because they were three-wheelers, you only needed a motorcycle license to drive one, and the taxes were much cheaper.

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Candy was one of the very first processed foods and many people treated it with suspicion, fearing it could be tainted in some way.

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Wearing rubber to sweat off your blubber was just one of many ways that people tried lose weight in the early 20th century.

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Sensenbrenner's Cigar store was located in San Diego between Schwarzenberg the Architect and Stenheiser the Printer. By 1890, an estimated 2.8 million German-born immigrants lived in the United States.

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When the Japanese conquered the Philippines in the early months of 1942, the United States lost a major source of sugar imports. Cooks learned to be creative, using saccharine, corn syrup, and even packets of flavored gelatin as sugar substitutes.

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Your grown children don't want to kiss you because it means certain death by halitosis.

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A common advertising theme in the early 20th Century was the claim that the product was so easy to use that even a woman could do it.

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Topsy was a character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) and later became a pickaninny stereotype in minstrel shows and advertising.

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In the 1960s they combined the worst aspects of a panty and a girdle to come up with the Pantie Girdle.

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 The Scott Electric Hair Brush contained no electricity, but did have slightly magnetized iron rods in its handle. A 1" diameter compass was included with each brush so the customer could be amazed that a supposedly non metallic brush would cause the needle to move.

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The Buescher Band Instrument Company was a manufacturer of musical instruments in Elkhart, Indiana, from 1894 to 1963. Louis Armstrong recorded with a Buescher Truetone Trumpet in the late 1920s.

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In the 1960s, Honda grew its market share dramatically by changing the image of motorcycle riders from gang members to average Americans.

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Charles Elmer Hires debuted a commercial version of root beer at the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition in 1876. Hires was a teetotaler who wanted to call the beverage "root tea" but he realized that Pennsylvania miners wouldn't be interested in a "soft" drink, so he called it Root Beer.

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The cardboard hat says "Nurse, Atmosphere Station." Even in the 1950s that made no sense.

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HERO Jr. was sold by Heathkit during the 1980s, cost about $600 and came as a kit; you had to mount and solder every component onto the circuit boards and install the motors, speakers, and sensors. His features included a security guard mode, alarm clock, reciting poetry, singing, and the ability to explore around the house.

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Marmola was made with desiccated thyroid and a lot of laxatives. In 1931, the Federal Trade Commission tried to stop them from making false claims and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court, which ultimately ruled in the FTC's favor.

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Chi-Chesters Pills contained pennyroyal, an old herbal remedy for seasickness, headaches, coughs and colds -- not to mention pregnancy, which no one was allowed to mention at the time. Pennyroyal can induce an abortion but it can also kill the mother or cause her irreversible kidney and liver damage.

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"Not just now sonny. But you just wait!"
There will be another war soon enough.

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Funny Vintage Ads (44)

 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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"Stripped for Action" but wearing a six-gun in case you like it rough.

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"It's a Psychological Fact: Pleasure Helps Your Disposition"

Sure, you could smoke a cigarette, but if it's pleasure you're after, try sex.

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"...an instant hit with the ladies" but only if the "ladies" are no older than 7.

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Bovril is a thick and salty meat extract paste that was developed in the 1870s by John Lawson Johnston.

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"Now every night is TV night ... and you make easy money on every show!"
As long as your friends are just as gullible as you were when you bought this.

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Any kid who was capable of following these instructions would soon be bored with the results.

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"The "Koshi Obi" strengthens instead of weakening the wearer."
Not if your friends see you wearing that in the locker room at the health club.

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CEO: "What can we do with all these twisted paper clips?"
Marketing executive: "Let's find out just how gullible some people are."

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Levi's Gremlin was introduced by the now defunct American Motor Corporation in 1973. The interior trim was actually a denim-look nylon, since cotton in a car interior was a fire hazard.

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"Bituminous Coal - Powers the Wheels of Progress!"
Until we realized the negative effects that coal was having on the environment.

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Atomic Man was part of Hasbro's GI Joe series and was a lame attempt at cashing in on the popularity of the "Six Million Dollar Man" TV show.

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International Correspondence Schools was founded in 1889 in Scranton, Pennsylvania to teach miners about mine safety. In time, the ICS curriculum expanded to include instruction in a wide variety of industrial trades as well as architecture and foreign languages.

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Considered one of the most iconic and widely used of all novelty items in the world, Groucho glasses were first marketed in the early 1940s

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Advertised as "America's Laxative", Pluto Water used the slogan "When Nature Won't, PLUTO Will."

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 Fire grenades were popular from the 1870s through the early 1900s. The grenades were filled with salt water, carbon tetrachloride or a powder and then sealed with a cork and cement. The grenade was thrown at the base of a fire so that the glass would smash and release the contents – putting out the fire.

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They say you can put this electrical device that draws a lot of current into the middle of melting ice. What could go wrong?

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"Tells you when it's safe to leave shelter"
Yeah, that would be never...
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"The Italians' desire for speed is only matched by Italians' desire."
Subtle!

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From 1788 to 1868 Britain transported more than 160,000 convicts from its overcrowded prisons to the Australian colonies. Gold was discovered in the 1850s and that caused another wave of migration. By the early 1900s, Australia had to advertise for more immigrants.

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 Crispettes are made from popcorn and a binding agent like chocolate or molasses. You'd have to manufacture and then sell many thousands of crispettes to make $351 in one day. Using a manual press, the muscles on your pressing arm would soon be as big as your head.

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 The introduction of electric lighting for the home in the 1910s put gas lighting at a great disadvantage. Inventors found a way to make gas lights switchable, but they were still much more dangerous than electric lights.

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8-track tape, first introduced in the late 1960s, was the first tape format that was widely available. It was portable and easy to use, but it also had quite a few drawbacks and was soon replace by cassette tapes. 

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What later became known as "Molotov Cocktail" and associated with Vyacheslav Molotov, the Soviet foreign minister, first appeared in the Spanish Civil War and was named by Finnish soldiers who used them against Soviet invaders during World War 2.

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Aunt Jemima pancake mix began in 1889 as the first ready-mix. In 2020, Quaker Oats announced that the Aunt Jemima brand would be retired "to make progress toward racial equality."

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Cigarette companies began selectively advertising to women in the late 1920s. The American Tobacco Company hired Edward Bernays, the father of public relations, who attacked the social taboo against women smoking in public by referring to cigarettes as "Torches of Freedom."

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In the early 1970s, a lot of kids wanted to modify their bikes to look like choppers. Modifications like this often fell victim to personal injury lawyers.

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Most likely from being around stinky men. A common theme of personal care advertising for women in the 1930s was the desire not to offend your man.

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 "With your own Moto-Scoot you can really live..." till you crash and land on your head with no helmet.

Moto-Scoot was a US motor scooter manufacturer in Chicago founded by Normal Siegel in 1937.

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From the 18th century onward, a conflict between surgeons and midwives arose, as doctors began to assert that their modern scientific techniques were better for mothers and infants than the folk medicine practiced by midwives. The "Perfection" Midwifery Case and others like it were developed to make midwives appear more like medical professionals.

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Prem is a brand of canned meat similar to Hormel's Spam that was first introduced in 1939 by Swift & Company in the United States. In 2008 Hormel, sued Swift for infringement because they began using a label that was very similar to Spam's.

 

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