Here's (above) a terrific magazine ad for mustard written by, of all people, Dorothy Sayers, the mystery writer. It's a masterpiece of understated pitchmanship. Click to enlarge.
Laxatives like Ex-Lax, Sal-Hepatica and Phillips frequently used comic strips (above) to sell their product. I wonder how the entire laxative industry came to be so focused on this one kind of advertising.
When I was a kid I used to love the Peter Pain demon. He'd lay in wait for some poor slob to pass then he'd jump out and clobber him with his pain bat. My friends and I drew countless parodies of this. Maybe the best ads always lend themselves to parody.
Much credit to the Cremo people who conceived of this new way to sell their cigars: imply that their competitor's cigars were made by people who didn't wash their hands after using the bathroom. Click to enlarge.
Here's (above) a terrific magazine ad for mustard written by, of all people, Dorothy Sayers, the mystery writer. It's a masterpiece of understated pitchmanship. Click to enlarge.
Laxatives like Ex-Lax, Sal-Hepatica and Phillips frequently used comic strips (above) to sell their product. I wonder how the entire laxative industry came to be so focused on this one kind of advertising.
When I was a kid I used to love the Peter Pain demon. He'd lay in wait for some poor slob to pass then he'd jump out and clobber him with his pain bat. My friends and I drew countless parodies of this. Maybe the best ads always lend themselves to parody.
Blogger won't enlarge the mustard ad so I put up a link to it
ReplyDeleteLarge version of the mustard AD.
while I'm at it
here's a large version of the second Don Martin picture from the last post.
ed:
ReplyDeletethese ads are great and real funny.
i remember you posting one a while back: a brand toilet paper affected a girl's disposition??
also in comic strip form.
great stuff! where do you get these from?
Rogelio: Thanks a million for the large versions of those pictures!!! I'll have to double check when I post pictures like that.
ReplyDeleteJose: The toilet paper ad was from an old xerox of the original ad. The Sayers ad was from a disappointing book on snobbery.
There are some other interesting examples, like "Pepsi" and "Pete," two comic cops drawn by Rube Goldberg for Pepsi-Cola in the 1940s. Borden's used to have very nice draughtsmanship in its comic-strip ads as well.
ReplyDeleteSayers worked for a long time in the advertising industry...in fact, she was the one who came up with the famous "Toucan" ad for the Guinness Brewery that, in one form or another, has been used since the 1920s. (My mother, who worked for the export department of Guinness in the mid-1950s, remembers getting orders from overseas for it.) Sayers would use her experiences in her mystery writing, most notably "Murder Must Advertise."
Boy, this was a really unpopular post! I wonder why.
ReplyDeleteThe Sayers ad was a nifty bit of copy writing (for those who could see Rogelio's enlarged version)and I'd have paid to hear about Peter Pain if I hadn't known about him already. A demon who beats his victims with a bat is a funny idea, and it sold the product very effectively.
For me a good ad is a work of art. (sigh!) Ah, well....
EO: I googled Pepsi and Pete and checked them out on your site. Very nice artwork! Goldberg needs to be better known.
ReplyDelete