Funny Vintage Ads (56)

 

 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.

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

The Sequah Medicine Company of England began in 1887 selling patent medicines through a network of traveling quack doctors called "Sequahs."

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

This 1878 poster for Edison's Phonograph doesn't mince words. The poster was printed from a woodcut and includes a reproduction of a studio portrait of Edison taken by the famous Civil War photographer Mathew Brady. 

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

"Ivory Snow for Snow-White Hands," unless of course your hands aren't white to begin with.

 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

So, what are the exclusive features, besides making you look like a conehead?

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

"Secrets of Ventriloquism Now Revealed!"
Summary: Don't move your lips.

 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

Orange Crush was created in 1911 by beverage and extract chemist Neil C. Ward. Originally, Orange Crush included orange pulp in the bottles, making it seem "fresh squeezed" even though the pulp was added. The brand is now owned by Dr Pepper.

 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

Dr Thomas Lawton's Fat Reducer was a round slab of soft rubber with a metal handle. If any fat actually was burned by this, it was from rubbing your skin with the device.

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

Starting in the 1970s, Columbia House, BMG Music, and other vendors utilized a practice called negative option billing. After shipping out your free or nearly free titles, they would ship another title every month and bill you at full price plus shipping. Their business model relied on customers essentially forgetting that they had subscribed to the service—and sending random CDs or cassette tapes to people that haven't asked for them, along with a bill.

 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

A split-level camper is always an interesting sight, but they were totally impractical on the road. A sharp turn could tip them over and a low overpass could be deadly.

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

This doesn't look like fun and games. This is how you turn an ad for pants into a gang rape fantasy.

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

Hey kids! Who wants a pre-cooked burger from a can?

 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

This was a promotional item distributed by Sylvania TV dealers in 1952. The kit contained cardboard items that kids could assemble to create a Space Ranger Helmet, Martian Mask, Atomic Space Rocket, Disintegrator gun, etc.

 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

Deposit a coin and you'll be rewarded with an illuminated image, just like the, "Biggest, Costliest, Television Sets."

 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

 $1 bought you 50 flat pieces of plastic shaped like soldiers and military equipment, and one 3D cannon that could "shoot" plastic bombs.

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

It's true! In 1908, Hydrox was the first to make cream-filled chocolate cookies. Oreo stole the idea and started production of their own cookies in 1912. Oreos quickly dominated the market and made Hydrox seem like the knockoff ever since.

 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

Now you can spray tan your truck!

 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

It's not your pits that stink. It's your soap! 

 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

Back when milk was not homogenized and was distributed in bottles, a layer of cream would rise to the top that could be spooned off and used in cooking or for coffee.

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

Now you can spend your days doing laundry in the basement!

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

This is what passed for "youthful in both appearance and action" in 1936.

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

Although it's been tried many times, adding jet engines to rotor blades has never worked well enough to go into production.

 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

Lucky Strike thinks you should stop snacking and smoke a Lucky instead.

 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

A breath mint might be a little easier to get away with.

 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

Why would you need "2 pairs of movable arms" and "2 pairs of legs?"
 Vampirella first appeared in Warren Publishing's black-and-white horror-comics magazine Vampirella #1 in Sept. 1969.

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

This is what airline food looked like in the 1950s and 1960s. Now passengers are lucky if they get a soda and a bag of peanuts.

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

"The best beauty treatment for a farmer's wife" is washing dishes while her husband blows smoke in her face.

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

Quaker comes with a big bang at a gay picnic. Wait. What?

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

And never before has a cassette player eaten a cassette tape. That was yet to come.

 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

Before there was Amazon, there was the Sears catalog. Founded as a mail-order watch company in the late 19th century, Sears, Roebuck and Company made its name with its swollen, jam-packed catalogs that advertised everything from underwear to entire house kits.

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

"In larger numbers than ever before, women and girls are invading American industires and taking the places of men."

🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻

Buy a No Soliciting Sign
That Really Works!