In natural colour

Frequency Modulation for radio broadcasting had been delayed by the onset of World War Two; since all manufacturers were fully committed to the U.S. military, there were no civilian radio sets available.

Shortly before the end of hostilities, radio brands start advertising the new technology and this contrived ad sums it up.

"Carmen Miranda's voice in natural color..." - confusing? you bet!

"Carmen Miranda", 1945
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Don Draper is not amused

If you ever wanted to see Gengis Khan selling cigarettes, this is your day. This is one of the strangest advertisements I have ever seen.

What were they thinking?

"Fantastic Century", 1968
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A celebration of the mad

I've always had a strange fascination for old advertisements in print media - ever since I was a skinny child, living somewhere in South America- I used to love poring over old stacks of National Geographic and Reader's Digest - and spent hours at a time wondering about the meaning of those funny ads.

"Smoking for good digestion", 1936
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Ads selling cigarettes, soda pop, unhealthy foods and useless trinkets. Ads selling products on exaggerated claims of "wonder", "amazement" and "peerless". Ads appealing to the scares and biases, to push the reader into "conforming with the majority". Ads selling obsolete, dangerous medical treatments, like toothpaste with uranium.

And there's also chauvinistic ads. Racist ads. Jingoistic ads. Ads offensive to almost every single minority you could think of. All sorts of ads that will make you think "wtf? what were they thinking when they printed that?" 

 

Printed ads are also moments in time - they are a time-capsule of pop-culture.

Do you want to dress-up like a 1932 Don Juan for a costume party? Are you into design and need inspiration for an Art Deco piece? Look no further than a printed advertisement in a glossy magazine. They are a true reflection of their times.

This blog is a celebration of the bad, the obsolete, the funny and the dodgy. All in amazing detail. Even when there's good stuff around, I will show you the bad stuff: the kind of things that Mad Ad Men do if left without supervision.

Caveat Emptor: My comments and stories are solely for entertainment purposes. Please be nice -or at least, amusing- when you post a comment. Most of the ads in this blog are in the public domain - if you think that your intellectual property has been breached, please let me know.