This Mystery's For You

For those of you that have followed me lo these many years, you know of my love of vintage advertising.  It's been a while, but in those early years, I would even scan all the ads from vintage magazines and post here.

I was at an estate sale a few weekends ago and came across this original painting:

Old Gold Scarecrow

 This ad comes from a lot of 1940's and 50's Saturday Evening Post magazines I bought at an estate sale this weekend.  The magazines were $1 each. How could I resist?  This particular ad comes from the October 21st, 1953 edition.

I'll probably do a blog on some of the other magazines at some point this winter.  I know, hold your breath.

Walt Disney's Comics and Stories (and Ads)

It's not quite officially summer yet, but we've already hit 100 here in St. Louis, so we might as well call it.  And summertime always brings my childhood to mind which involved not going to school (the best), watching game shows on TV, hanging out in our basement (because it was cooler) and reading comic books.

I often pick up random (cheap) comic books at estate and garage sales to supplement our bathroom reading supply.  This is one of them.  This particular comic dates from 1978.

Saturday Evening (Christmas Blog) Post

It's been a while since I posted a magazine, but this one had so many great ads and Christmas ones to boot, so here it is.  I picked this magazine up at an estate sale over the summer.  It has a lot of issues, not the least of which is the red ink bled through most of the ads.  But they're still fun to look at.  And of course with the ads come my poor attempt at humor.  Please bear with me.

And so, here it is, from December 8th, 1951, The Saturday Evening Post (ads only).

Cover art by John Falter who did a number of covers for The Saturday Evening Post.

Stag Famous Firsts

Just in the nick of time for your New Years Eve party are these helpful party and snack tips from the folks at Stag Beer.  There's no date on this, but based on the hair and clothes styles, I'd put it late 1950's.

Halloween Ads -- Leftovers

Today will be the final installment of my Halloween advertising slicks (collective sigh heard throughout all blogdom).  Today, I'll focus on some of the full pages with some closeups and a general house clearing of the leftovers. Enjoy!

Halloween Ads - Vignettes

 You didn't think I was out of ads, did you?  Today we look at some of the standalone Halloween vignettes you could add to your ad.

Halloween Slicks -- Banners

Continuing from yesterday's theme, today I bring you more vintage advertising slicks. These templates allowed customers to choose a themed layout for their store's advertising.

Today we look at banners.  Those eye-catching headline grabbers that get you to look at the full ad.

Halloween Slicks -- Witches Edition

I'll be honest, the subject of today's post hasn't seemed to be as big of a hit on the blog as I thought they would be.  I think they're pretty neat, but I'm a sucker for vintage advertising.  I've posted other examples of these in the past year. This time, it's Halloween ads.

These are from what I now know are known as advertising "slicks" (thanks, FrankO).  These were magazines of advertising templates from which potential customers could choose for newspaper ads. Place holders like "Shop Name's" would be replaced with your business details.

These ads date from the early 1970's. I'm going to spread them out this season as I have quite a few and I don't want to bore overwhelm you all at once. Today, we'll focus on witches. Enjoy!

Merry Christmas (in Ads)

While the above "00" was meant to be a place holder for the ad, it's appropriate today.  Wow, that went quick.  And while I didn't get anywhere near the number of posts out I wanted to, please accept my Christmas wishes and this minor offering of more vintage advertising from the slicks I bought a couple years ago.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I know what you're thinking: "You disappear after Halloween and now you come crawling back with a measly Thanksgiving offering of old newpaper ads."  And you'd be right.  These come from the ad "slicks" (I believe that is the term) I found several years ago.

 I hope you'll enjoy them and remember, save me the drumstick!

A Honey of a Dagger

Comic books ads have always been a fascination of mine.  I would peruse those ads in my comic books as a kid, dreaming of ordering a pair of X-Ray Specs (for scientific purposes, of course), that voice-throwing gadget (fool your parents and your teachers!) or a life-sized Frankenstein's monster (because who wouln't want one?!) Sadly, I never ordered anything as my mom told me they were a ripoff. Who knew moms were so smart?

I don't recall ever seeing this pin-on dagger in a comic book, but I would venture a guess it was marketed similarly.  I found this in a box lot of magic tricks over the summer.

Reader's Digest Condensed - December 1968

It's time for the December edition of Reader's Digest Condensed, which of course means, just the ads.  But as a bonus in honor of Christmas, I'm including "St. Nicholas: The People's Saint" for a bit of history on the jolly fat man in red.

Christmas Ad Templates

Time for this season's dose of the newspaper ad templates I found this past summer. These date from December 1968 and '69.

Good Day and Welcome to Day 1

There's a war on Christmas, my friends.  I'm not talking about "Merry Christmas" vs. "Happy Holidays". I'm talking about Christmas vs. Halloween.  It seems to be popular thought as of late that you're either a Halloween person or a Christmas person.  I'm here to tell you that's not true, because I'm both.

Historically, I've blogged a lot more during October than in December, particularly the last few years. So, I'm here this month to attempt to make up for it with my "25 Days of Christmas".  That's right, once again I will attempt to post something every day in December leading up to Christmas.  And while I admit, my Halloween-related finds tend to be a little more interesting, I hope you'll enjoy my Christmas tidings this month as well.

Happy Thanksgiving

More from the newspaper advertising templates.

Happy Thanksgiving and don't overstuff yourself!  Or do. Who am I to judge?

Scaring Up Some Sales

You may recall the debut of the grocery sale templates on this site last month. Or you may not. Either way, you're getting some more of them.  This time, it's Halloween-themed ads, of course.

First up, these "Monster Sale!" ads from October of 1968 feature some pretty neat art.

Halloween Ads

These ads are the remainders from going through various October issues of vintage 1960's magazines such as Good Housekeeping, Ladies Home Journal, and Better Homes and Gardens.  As a bonus, I'm including "Halloween Party Shari Lewis Style".  You're welcome.

Reader's Digest Condensed - October 1972

Welcome to one of my more sporadic features - Reader's Digest Condensed, or as I call it "Just the Ads".  Today's issue is the October 1972 edition.

Make Way for Fall

Last Spring I went to a private estate sale, private in the sense it was run by the family and not a professional estate sale company.  The house was pretty run down and I wasn't finding anything of interest until I came across a huge, flat cardboard box full of papers.  Looking through them, I found catalogs of old newspaper advertising templates.  These would have been used by companies looking to advertise in the newspaper and would have provided text and graphics which could be clipped  and customized to fit their company, the origin of the term "clip art".  As evidenced by many of my blog posts, I'm a fan of vintage advertising, so this was right up my alley.  The owner originally wanted $20 for the box, but I talked them down to $10. 

The catalogs were produced by Metro Associated Services (some of the original "Mad Men" of Madison Avenue) and spanned all seasons and three decades: the 1960's to the 80's. The company is still in business.

The catalogs measure 18" x 24", so it made scanning a bit unwieldy, but I did my best.  The stitching software I have also had issues putting some pages together due to repeating patterns, so I couldn't digitally reassemble all pages.  I'll be posting samples by season throughout the coming year. Today's ads date from 1964 and '65 and feature lots of mid century fonts and images.  Enjoy!