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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