Vintage Panda found a bunch of old advertisements that would never be printed today. A couple of them are silly. Most of them are down-right offensive. It’s hard to believe a few of them ever got published in any time. Check them out here.
Once you get past all the rank discrimination, the ads illuminate the history of advertising.
You can see how print ads transitioned from a graphic with tons of words (the ad for the Postage Meter, which begins with “Is it always illegal to kill a woman?” is an entire story) to pure graphics with maybe a slogan like we see today.
But seriously, this stuff is crazy.
Thanks to Brandon Sharp for the link!
YOUR TURN: Which ad do you find the most offensive? The most surprising?
3 replies on “Somehow This is Don Draper’s Fault”
How can you pick just one? They’re all terrible! It boggles me the relation advertisers (now and then) try to make between their message and the product. Like how men are better than women because sweaters. What?
I’ve seen a number of these over my years of reading old publications, but this collection of all of them in one place! They’re all pretty rough but #2 shows a larger fundamental view of that era. Although #18 is crazy! Yikes.
I started looking at these but then one of my kids came up and I quickly closed the window. It’s amazing that these used to be in ordinary magazines.