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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The Huffy Radio Bike, manufactured from 1955 to 1958, had a high voltage bias supply for the tube radio and a battery pack located on the rear carrier. Unfortunately for the Radio Bike, the first cheap and small transistor radios came out at the same time, making it very easy to take music with you everywhere.
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Pozzoni started work as a hairdresser in 1850, and began making various cosmetic products for his customers. By 1869, his face power was a huge success because of aggressive advertising. Pozzoni's company's greatest success came after he died with the introduction in 1895 of the famous metal Gold Puff Box that was included with every purchase of the face powder.
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The Micro-6, introduced in 1964, was designed by Sir Clive Sinclair, whose early simple, cheap and often kit-assembled devices helped usher in the UK's home computer revolution. 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻
Wrinkles, sagging necks and double chins, characteristics of many women over the age of thirty-five, were commonly treated in the 1900s by combining massage and skin-care products with straps, bandages and/or tapes.
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Ads like this in the back of comic books were common in the 1960s and 70s. 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻
Advertisers can always dress up a boring product with a scantily-clad woman promising sex.
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The US spent 15 years and over one billion (in 1950s dollars) trying to design a nuclear-powered aircraft before Kennedy cancelled the effort in 1961, and started the space program that ultimately put a American astronauts on the moon. 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻
And who doesn't love a generous coating of lard on their beef.
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In 1928, Dorothy Cox, her brother Joseph, and their four sisters, Margaret, Ursula, Eileen, and Theresa founded the Cox Candy business using recipes out of a Fanny Farmer Cookbook. 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻
Yeah, and the picture can even be bigger than "life size" by zooming in more. Meanwhile, that $500 in 1955, would be worth $5,631.27 in 2023.
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In 1957, Hughes engineers could envision a future with picture phones but couldn't also imagine a change from rotary to push-button dialing. 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻
Dustless? Hardly. And definitely not effortless, because it works by pumping the handles.
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The C. D. Kenny Co. was a Baltimore, Maryland-based importer of tea and coffee founded by Cornelius David Kenny in 1872. Hit hard by the Great Depression, the company closed its retail stores in 1935. It was acquired by Nathan Cummings' Consolidated Food Corporation of Chicago in 1939 and is now owned by Sara Lee. 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻
Thomas Holloway made his fortune by manufacturing patent medicines in the 19th century. His pills and ointment were advertised as being a 'universal cure' for almost any illness or disease and were used by thousands of people throughout the Victorian period, including Queen Victoria.
🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻 Texaco tells us not to worry because they've got this war under control, while assuring us that Hitler's minions are not allowed to think. 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻
"That's right son, you can be a hero, just like me. And someday you might even get a 10% discount at Home Depot."
The "New" National Guard turned out to be a lot like the old National Guard - low pay and the chance to be sent off to war at a moment's notice.
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If you're gonna sell "nudie movies" then maybe "Sweet William" isn't the best company name.
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It's true: people with self-esteem issues tend to spend more money on flashy and expensive objects like cars to make themselves feel better.
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The Honeywell Kitchen Computer was a special offering by Neiman Marcus in 1969, as one of a continuing series of extravagant gift ideas, and the first time a computer was offered as a consumer product. It cost US$10,000 (equivalent to US$74,000 in 2021) and was completely impractical because the user needed to complete a two-week course just to learn how to program the device, using only toggle-switch input and binary-light output. 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻
The Coke Booster and the Grass Booster were a humidifier and dehumidifier respectively and were a cash cow for this company because drug users were happy to pay 10 times what these items were worth.
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"All you have to do is rinse the dishes, giving a swish of the cloth where needed..." Wait! I thought you just said, "No Wash, No Wipe." Now which is it? 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻
These are "Genuine Monkee Socks" because we wrote "Monkees" on them.
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Peoples Temple was a religious community led by Jim Jones (1931–78) that came to international attention after some 900 of its members died at their compound in Jonestown, Guyana, in a massive act of murder-suicide on November 18, 1978. 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻
They should have kept that book. The rear engine placement in the Corvair caused a weight imbalance that resulted in poor handling.
In his book “Unsafe at Any Speed”, the famous political activist Ralph Nader claimed that the Chevrolet Corvair was the most dangerous automobile on the road in the 1960s.
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"Home is what you make it." The people who used this paint made their homes into hazardous waste sites. White lead paint was considered the premium paint until the late 1970s, when it was regulated out of existence.
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Tampax gently confronts the myth that virgins can't use tampons.
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Motorola TV's "Miracle Interlace" was more than just an advertising gimmick. Their engineers were able to precisely synchronize the scan lines so that there were no blank spaces in between. 🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻🔻
During WW2, the trade group North American Aviation tried to convince Americans that their industry was not making record profits and therefore their workers shouldn't strike or demand big raises.
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"Stella" lost 135 pounds, but apparently none of it came from her face.
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Yes friends, we can't promise you an actual job, but we can teach you how to write ads just like the gainfully employed writer who wrote this ad.
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