Old airline ads

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These are a collection of mid 20th century airline ads. They are from an era when air travel was more exotic than it is today. It would be slightly gauche to not wear a suit or dress. They started by emphasizing the reach of airplanes, but eventually moved on to targeting other groups of travelers than the early adopters: older people, single woman, families, businessmen and so forth.

They are taken from the Duke Library's Transportation Archive. 

Old Japanese matchbooks

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It used to be that most public establishments would have ashtrays with matchbooks laid next to them. The matchbooks would have advertisements on them, for either the business itself or some other service. Of course, since the matchbooks were small, the ads were tiny as well. As a result, the graphics and ad copy were minimal.

With the decline of public smoking promotional matchbooks have faded into the past. These images, and those after the jump, are of some old Japanese matchbook covers. There are more at the Flikr stream Japanese matchbox labels.

Peanuts and ground ground-nuts

I fail to see why you did not understand that groceryman, he did not call it "ground ground nuts," he called it "ground ground-nuts" which is the only really sensible thing to call it. Peanuts grow in the GROUND and are therefore GROUND-nuts, and after you take them out of the ground you grind them up and you have ground ground-nuts, which is a much more accurate name than peanut butter, you just don't understand English. ― Helene Hanff

 

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Old beer ads

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There is a genre of clickbait that teases old ads that would never be acceptable today. The above ad is often featured, because any mention of a female in a domestic setting is a sin against nature to a certain segment of modern damsels (btw, a bit of useless trivia -- damsel comes from the French word damoiselle and the male equivalent is damoiseau, so I guess us guys would be a damseau?). 

I just took the ad to be a joke. Curiously enough, when I was dating Mrs. Sinistral the first time she invited me to her apartment she burned steak she was cooking and got upset like the woman in the ad. However, to console her over the charred steak I didn't counter that the beer was OK -- and I doubt that would have worked. Besides, and how can I say this delicately... the steak was not my priority that night anyway, so I cleverly employed different tactics. 

Below, and after the jump, are more old beer ads. Since guys are generally buying the beer they feature a lot of pretty women and/or convivial settings. Enjoy.

Beauty is youth at all ages

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These are graphics from Palmolive soap ads from the 1920s through the 1950s. Palmolive's ad agency used several templates for the ad layouts, with one of the most common being a strong graphical image at top with teaser text (the rather incoherent phrase that acts as the title of this post is one of the teasers). The image to the left shows the full ad that the above image is taken from.

The Palmolive ads are aimed at women, and they stress youth, beauty and romance. Occasionally the interests of the day surface -- during the war years the men appear in uniform, there is a spate of ads featuring the Dionne quintuplets, while early ads featured an Egyptian motif that was probably a result of the finding of Tut's tomb and the burst of interest in Egyptology at the time.

By contrast today's soap ads are much more fixated on natural ingredients, moisturizing, scents and skin care. I wonder what the future holds? 

 

These ad images, and those after the jump, were taken from the Duke University Archive's Palmolive Company collection. There are more examples at the link.

Pre WWI Russian posters

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This is an interesting period in Russian poster design. It is nestled between the florid and highly decorative style of the late 19th Century and the heroic realism of the Soviet era. A lot of graphic experimentation is taking place, you can see the gradual evolution towards the cleaner and bolder style of the later 20th Century. There are more examples after the jump.

Greyhound Bus ads

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These are color advertisements for Greyhound Bus from the mid 1940s to the mid 1950s. The early ads focus on soldiers returning home and later they focus on travelling to see different parts of America.

In his Civil War: a Narrative Shelby Foote talked about the long campaigns meant that the primarily rural soldiers traveled far and developed a different sense of the nation. Similarly, in WWII many of the young men had traveled to Europe, Africa or Asia. In the years after, and before the wide spread of the car culture or cheap airfare, these young men and their families wanted to see distant places in the States. Greyhound buses provided them with a means to travel long distances.

These ads, and those after the jump, are from the Ad Access section of Duke University's digital repository. 

War Bonds

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These are newspaper ads for WWII War Bonds. Financing the war involved printing money. The bonds, which actually had a poor rate of return, were used to remove excess cash from the economy to control inflation. As you can see in these examples patriotism, the sacrifice of the soldiers, and the separation from husbands/boyfriends/sons (or the girl back home) were the themes of the ads.

These examples, and those after the jump, are from Duke University's Digital Repository. There are more at the link.

Old bicycle ads

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Bicycles have been around since Baron Karl von Drais's "Running Machine" built in 1817. It was just the frame, seat and 2 wheels and, since it lacked pedals, was more of an aid to running than what we would consider a modern bicycle. Many technical innovations -- pedals, chains, reliable brakes, steering, rubber and pneumatic tires to name a few -- had to be developed as the bicycle evolved to its modern form (bicycle history timeline).

The image of the bicycle has also evolved. In its early days it was a technological marvel of transportation. Eventually the automobile knocked it from that perch and it slid down to being primarily a kid's toy. However. at the same time racing and mountain bikes continued to be developed and they have since found an avid, albeit slightly annoying, following.

These are old vintage ads for bicycles. There are more after the jump and even more at La boite verte's  49 belles publicités anciennes pour des vélos.

Ads for alcohol

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Here is a small collection of old beer, wine and liquor ads. I love the delighted expression on the guy's face in the ad above. The pure malt tonic below was an advertising strategy of the early 20th century. Sometimes, as well as advising the tonics to mothers, it was also suggested to let the little ankle-biters have a nip as well. You can read about that at Just What the Doctor Ordered.

There are a few more ads after the jump. Enjoy.

Dressing like a gentleman

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When my brother, wife and myself watched the movie Dunkirk one thing that amused us was the owner of the civilian boat went to sea wearing a tie. Obviously our sartorial choices when we go sailing are lacking.

These are 1942 men's clothing ads from the New York Public Library Digital Collection. In studying them it is clear that I am still an oaf when it comes to dressing like a proper Gentleman. I must try to remember to smoke a pipe and dress in a suit next time I go golfing.

There are more examples after the jump, and of course even more at the above link.

Before there were smart phones

This is a 1905 advertisement from the Seattle Independent Telephone Directory selling residential telephone service. It's clearly aimed at women, who apparently wore lacey dresses and Easter bonnets when they spoke on the phone back in the old-timey days. If you can't read the print on the ad, this is what they tout:

Advantages of a residence telephone

• Makes engagements
• Invites you friends
• Friends can call you
• Does your shopping
• Reserve theatre tickets
• Orders your groceries
• And corrects mistakes
• Calls the plumber
• Hastens the delivery of goods
• Saves letter writing
• Calls your husband
• Saves time and steps
• Runs your errands
• Calls the doctor
• Calls the fire department
• Calls the police

I'm guessing the home phone service wasn't really a hard sell to women, but the issue of it was the cost, which husbands might object to. The bullet points seem like a list of talking points she might use to convince him the phone bill was worth it.

Aside from that I find the active voice odd. The telephone "makes engagements" rather than you "make  engagements". Strange that they make the phone the agent of action rather than the person.

  

Conspiracy Theory Kits

Roswell Crash Site

 The Ogilvy & Mather ad agency put together a clever campaign for Tamya, a company that sells plastic models and radio control kits, that featured ads for model kits of popular conspiracy theories. Here, and after the fold, are those kits. You can click any image to enlarge it.

JFK and the Grassy Knoll

The Wonders of Vacuum Tubes

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Although they've been replaced by transistors and integrated circuits, there was a time when vacuum tubes were a fundamental component of modern electronics. Now exotic, they were common during the first electronic revolution.

Today you can buy hard drives, graphics cards and the like in stores, in the old-timey days vacuum tube testers were readily found in hardware and grocery stores. You could test vacuum tubes and buy their replacements easily, and it was a skill any do-it-yourselfer was expected to have.

Where there are products there is advertising. The problem is they were, like an oil filter in an engine, just a part of a machine, and not a very sexy or graphically interesting part at all. So how to sway consumer dollars?

The vacuum tube ads were pretty straight forward -- either a picture of a tube with copy extolling their virtues, or a their place in the wonders of radio emphasized. Here, and after a the fold, are some old ads that tried to sell what was then a mundane part of electronics.

Source: Duke University Libraries Digital Repository.