Category: Advertising

You Really Need To Get Your Schlitztogether

1957

And the award for best illustration of ale with squirrels, accordions, and ascots goes to…

Schlitz! Y’all, this ad did its job. It actually makes me wants Schlitz, despite the fact that I would never order a 4.6% ABV beer because that’s just wasting my time. My mouth tells me to rebuke the “Schlitzness” but my eyes say “Carry on, my wayward daughter.”

Seriously, tell me, doesn’t this look like more fun than a barrel of monkeys?

You Can’t Always Get What You Want

This kiddo wishes he were ANYWHERE but under the tree with these losers. Perhaps he’s upset because he received a Norma pencil.

At least these parents know how to make their daughter’s Christmas a bright one.

I’d think you could use that pram for a real baby, no?

But the best gift by far is always a car.  Especially if it’s a Cadillac.

Turns Out They Were Saying ‘Merica Back In ’58

This 1958 Ford ad isn’t cropped or split down the middle of a page. It actually says “Merica’s” instead of America. I’m assuming it was implied that the painter had painted it on the part of the billboard to which we aren’t privy. But as it stands, it’s pretty funny. And the rest of the ad itself was peppy and colorful.

Just In Case You Forgot Who The King Of Twills Was

It’s Stevens Twist Twill, lest ye forget. The red lion. And just in case you’re not familiar with twill, it’s a fabric with ridges. It’s the Ruffles of the material world.

http://www.gccworld.com

You know how people these days looooove to say how important it is to “start a dialog” about things? How necessary it is for them to “start the conversation”? It makes me want to wretch, that kind of speech. So let’s just have a chit-chat about these manufacturer names, shall we? First off: Jack Tar Togs, that’s brilliant. It sounds like the mascot for a little league team. Go, Jack Tar Togs!

Hit Em Hard seems aggressive, but the list includes many manly names like Big Dad and 5 Brother (forget 5 Sister) and Stur-Dee. Sounds super reliable, right? But then others are more vexing. Pool’s is “swetpruf”? What is that about? That’s not even phonetically-spelled.

ebay

It reminds me of Farmer Jack’s advertising ploy. But he does it on PURPOSE. Or purrpuss, shall I say?

And as for Tuf-Nut? Yikes. I’ll take your word for it.

Pinterest

Mabel, If You’re Able, Black Label On The Table

1958

Note the M on Mabel’s daisy dress, a precursor to Laverne’s sweater L.

Though no longer widely distributed in the U.S., Black Label remains the official beer of Beer Frisbee, aka Beersbie–because that’s a thing.

In South Africa, they went in another direction, a decidedly non-Mabel direction. MANLY.

http://www.behance.net

Doesn’t it look HEAVY? That must be the 22 oz mug.

And in Australia, it was even weirder.

Snoopy Was A Carnivore Who Probably Ate Horses

Painting done not by Norman Rockwell, but Douglass Crockwell. Seriously.

Ah, yes. In the years before talk of puppy mills and Pit Bulls & Parolees, folks would go to the Pet Shop and actually procure puppies there, not just on the days when the Humane Society pimped strays on Saturdays. Can’t you just smell their little puppy breath and the softness of their puppy heads? This is part of a 1956 ad for Friskies.

Now, I’ve had plenty of dogs in my day, and they all liked meat. Carrots, no. Cabbage, wouldn’t touch it. Celery, forget it. But chicken and beef and pork? Yes. Basically any of the Chipotle proteins, dogs like. Now in case you didn’t skim the ad up top, it says Friskies contains “lean red horse meat.” Yum! Giddyup! So we can safely assume those beagle puppies were into horsemeat. It makes me wonder about Jemima. Jemima was the beagle we lost last year to cancer, and she looked nothing like Snoopy, who is also purportedly a beagle. Even this Pinterest image shows you that Snoopy and beagles have hardly anything in common. But I bet they’d both eat horse meat.

And turkey.

And bacon and eggs.

Maybe, just maybe, they’d both like watermelon for dessert, like this happy beagle.

But then it’s strictly back to horse meat.

mises.org

Why Paint The Town Red When You Can Paint Your Home Pink?

Even more cliche than those drugstore Father’s Day cards referencing golf and ale consumption and handyman tools, are the ones that show Dad taking a paint roller to his bird’s egg blue brick house and painting it Pepto-Bismol pink.

LIFE 1967

Okay, so he’s actually painting a pink house blue. That makes more sense. Perhaps Mom just painted it pink a month ago for Mother’s Day, and now it’s HIS day and his color. He gets eleven months of blue, but she only gets four weeks of pink. That’s not fair.

But, really, what’s wrong with the pink? Pink houses were so coveted in the 80s, in fact, that John Cougar Mellencamp even wrote a song about it.

giphy.com

Here he is in the video, excitedly pumping up the cheerleader and sweat-domed, sleeveless buddy whom he had recruited to paint the basic white clapboard house behind him. All hail pink houses! And really, ain’t that America, for you and me?

The ad continues with way more paragraphs than necessary, as was the way back in the day, when people weren’t reading posts on phones and had plenty of time to sit and read a short-story-length ad on paint.

And what mid-century dad didn’t appreciate a can of SPRED Glide-On, not to be confused with Astroglide? Glidden also made a latex wall paint called SPRED Satin, for even fancier fathers.

So maybe Dad didn’t want a pink house for good reason. What do you think? A palace fit for a king? Not even for a vacation house? Sometimes less is more.

http://www.hotelroomsearch.net

Is This My Cowardly Lion?

It’s not often that I get to say “I’m too young to remember this,” but since I wasn’t alive in the 60s–hey, I’m too young. I was flipping through my 1967 LIFE and saw this image of Bert Lahr.

It didn’t make me want to eat Lay’s. It didn’t make me want to wear a blackjack dealer visor. Instead, it raised red flags.

  1. That’s unhygienic to stack chips on a table (and nearly impossible).
  2. We all know each chip bag contains precisely 14 chips, not dozens.
  3. Bert looks uncomfortable, like he’s wincing through back pain. In fact, he DID die later that year, in December.

If you’re over 55, you may recall this ad. It’s chock full of everything that makes people cringe these days, and I don’t mean the minimalist background. Racism and poor acting and stealing, oh my!

I’ll choose to remember him as the Cowardly Lion, and not as the Lay’s pitchman. RIP.

Put More Sugar In Lisa

 

This ad from my May 19, 1967 LIFE blows my mind. (scroll down for larger type)

 

It literally says, “Make sure you get sugar every day. People need what sugar’s got.” People don’t need more sugar. I’ve got plenty of sugar in me. I’ll tell you what I need: Lisa’s life. Lisa’s got it made. Trust fund much? I don’t see anything here about clocking in and working for the man.

Now THERE’S a metaphor!