Thursday, October 16, 2008

Vintage Ads

I love Vintage Ads.

They harken upon a simpler time and place and, quite often, are humorous, at least to me, given the change in mores that have occurred over my lifetime.

In fact, I have several Vintage Ads hanging on the walls of the Taj Mahal.

The above image is an ad for Chrysler from the mid 60's, probably from Life or Look magazine, judging from the size of this two page spread. And back then, as now, they had an overly abundant number of vehicle offerings. This ad, alone, shows 56 of them. I mean, really, did both Plymouth and Dodge need a Neon, with both of them having the same name?

As for that Swamp Buggy Races frisbee, with my signature on it? Well, that is another blog. Tease, Tease...

This one is an ad extolling the value of Valvoline Motor Oil. "Cross-Country or Cross-Town, Havoline out-performs them all." Circa mid 50's, judging by the swept line features of those cars.

This one is for The General Tire, dating from 1942. It suggests that at 50 degrees, "Drive Sanely, 40 mph"; at 70 degrees, "Slow Down, 30-35 mph"; at 90 degrees, "Don't Drive, if you must-go at 25 mph". I love it. Plus, if you double click on the image, and read the text, you can see that maintaining air pressure in your tires was not thought up by one of our current presidential candidates.

Sorry about the quality of this one but it is another Chrysler ad from the early 50's. I just love it for the ragtop and the longroof in this one. Not a lowly sedan in sight.

This one, although probably not as PC as is warranted in today's climate, I just find it funny.

And another old Schlitz ad for the Complaint Department Manager.

My friend, Carri, sent this to me a while back. While, technically, not an ad, written copy I thought was pretty hilarious.

And just a couple found around the pipes.

And after seeing the above ad, can I surprise you with the following?

How did we not see that one coming? "Not that there is anything wrong with that."

Anyway, the New York Public Library is exhibiting Vintage Cigarette Ads and I thought I would put up a link to it for those crazies, such as me, who enjoy this type of stuff. Can't afford a trip to the Big Apple between now and the end of the year? That's okay, you can check it out here.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I used to collect the vintage cig ads, preferring the "Christmas carton" genre. Great gift idea!

The CDM said...

A Schlitznic. I had no idea that those were what I was really having all these years.