Funny Vintage Ads (78)

 

 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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This magazine put out by Popular Mechanics in the 1940s certainly hasn't aged well.

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 Pain Exterminator seems a little drastic, like it's a pest infestation.
Hirst’s Remedy Co. began in Hamilton Ontario in the late 19th Century.  

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People dressed up while traveling in the 1930s and 40s, even on busses, but by 1951, these snappy dressers wouldn't be traveling by bus.

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From the late 60s to the early 80s, Bird Engineering manufactured full line of mini-bikes and go-carts in Omaha, Nebraska. 

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Why would you "Sleep like a top" after taking these pills?
The range of diseases the pills claimed to cure is astonishing. Holloway's Pills could treat almost anything. They contained aloe, myrrh, and saffron, which while probably not harmful, would be unlikely to have any of the claimed affects.

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Fennings Lung Healers contained Ipecacuanha, obtained from the root of a Brazilian plant, and commonly used to bring on vomiting.
Alfred Fennings (1816-1900) was a chemist who established Fennings Pharmaceuticals in London in 1840.

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That belt digging into your thigh really sells it.
AMF began to make exercise equipment for home and gym use under the Vitamaster label in 1950. 

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The Reliant Regal MK III was a three-wheeled car with a four-cylinder engine, produced from 1952 to 1973 in the UK, that you could drive with a motorcycle license.

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 Back then they meant on a cisgender male, but yellow? Not so sexy. And the obvious outline of his junk certainly doesn't impress.

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Waking up with a hangover and wearing the same suit you had on last night? Maybe you have a drinking problem? Nah. I just need a better hangover remedy.

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Even in 1950, "up to" $23 a week ($3.28 a day) was ridiculous, but hey, it does include a  "free dress."   20

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I don't mind seeing whimsical porch rocks in Facebook Marketplace, but I simply cannot abide cut-rate whimsical porch rocks.

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Waxtite is the heat-sealed waxed-paper packaging system that was used by Kellogg's starting in 1914, around the outside of their cereal boxes. Later, the Waxtite packaging was moved inside the box.

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"Dowdy" means "unfashionable and without style in appearance."
A laundry detergent can do a lot of things, but it can't make your wardrobe more stylish.

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At least the guy who wrote this ad is making money at home. As for the "Big Demand" for home grown mushrooms -- there won't be any demand unless you create one.  

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Peoples Temple was a religious community led by Jim Jones (1931–78) that self-destructed in a massive act of murder-suicide on November 18, 1978, in Jonestown, Guyana.

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Sure, you can sew up some cute outfits, but where do you get the heads and hands?
Coats & Clark is a British company that was founded over 250 years ago. It is the world's largest thread and structural components manufacturer for apparel and footwear. 

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Elastic waistbands were a major innovation in "faultless" sleep wear, while men continued to sleep with their shirts unbuttoned.
The Faultless Pajama Company was a Baltimore-based garment manufacturer that began operation in 1881.

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 In the 1960s, the V-RROOM! bike was dream come true -- for a kid, but the awful noise from that fake engine caused instant regret from everyone else.

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Why wait till the women show up? Loosen up a little!
The sanforization process of treating woven fabrics to reduce the amount of shrinkage was invented in 1930, by the American businessman Sanford Lockwood Cluett.

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 An early notion of what virtual reality cycling might look like. The Cinématographe, developed by the Lumière brothers in 1895 was first viable film camera.

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"Kerr's Cotton Takes the Cake"
The "cakewalk" is a reference to dancing contests among plantation slaves during slavery in which a cake was awarded as a prize.

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The Jimmy Jet table top flight simulator was manufactured between 1963-1966 by Deluxe Reading, Inc. and sold in supermarkets and drug stores.

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This ad appeared in Modern Mechanics magazine in 1934. You'd think mechanics would be a little more practical than to fall for this snake oil salesman.

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If the food is so good, why would you have indigestion?

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Wait, do you really want muscles like a husky?

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My gums are fine.
Get lost, you little smart-ass.

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Introduced in 1906, one of the main ingredients in O-Cedar Polish was cedar leaf oil.

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John Players & Sons now known as Players is a British brand founded in 1877. The image of the sailor was known as "Hero" because of the name on his hat band, but his name was actually Thomas Huntley Wood.

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Competition from Japanese toy makers in the 1950s was starting to worry US toy makers so much that "The American Toy Institute" was born to explain why toys made in the US were far superior.

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