By: Ethan Anderson, Government Records Archivist
As the Super Bowl recently reminded us, advertisers nowadays use a number of gimmicks to sell their products to consumers, from talking animals and catchy music to outlandish special effects and endless celebrity endorsements. Generations ago, things were simpler…and often peculiar. Cigarettes and addictive drugs were touted for their health benefits, farm machinery could be marketed to children, and your pharmacist and hardware store were often one and the same. We’ve combed through our collection to highlight a few advertisements that made us tip our heads in bewilderment like the RCA dog:
Topeka’s Scott Brothers surely sold delicious popsicles, but their tastes in mascots was questionable. What better way to market your product to children than with what looks like a living, breathing, popsicle-eating ventriloquist dummy? Popsicle Pete looks like the 1930s version of Pennywise the Clown and surely made an appearance in more than a few children’s nightmares.
If you grew up watching Sesame Street, you are probably familiar with the game “One of the These Things,” in which viewers had to spot an out-of-place item in a group of other items. We thought of that game after seeing this photograph of Cowdery’s Drug Store in Ottawa, which specialized in drugs, medicines, and…paints? Though this wasn’t an unusual combination for pharmacies of the period, we’d still prefer to take our business elsewhere.
While E.B. Guild’s advertisements are pretty standard, their upstairs neighbor Professor Field leaves us with one very important question: How common were intestinal parasites in the 1880s that people could make a living marketing themselves as strictly tape worm specialists?! H. G. Wells must have been imagining an escape from the Victorian Era’s intestinal minefield when he wrote The Time Machine.
After seeing this delivery truck for the Pet Milk Company of Iola, we have soooo many questions. We hope the owner’s surname was Pet, otherwise were they marketing ice cream to pets? Were they milking pets to create the ice cream? We can’t think of a better illustration of the importance of a good brand name.
Who needs aspirin, insulin, penicillin or any other wonders of modern medicine when there’s Dr. Perdue’s Ague Cure? Touted as the remedy for everything from headaches to heart disease and fever to “female weakness,” this snake oil could apparently do anything but sell itself. We find his claim that the drug was equal to the seven wonders of the world COMBINED as outrageous, egregious, preposterous.
Have you ever been redecorating your home and thought “while I’m out shopping for a new kitchen table and a couch for the living room, it sure would be convenient to also pick out my casket”? If that’s the case (and we hope it isn’t), then E. W. Dowd’s is the store for you! We also have a few questions for Dowd’s neighbor Brown, who felt the need to specify that he was “the live” druggist. Ottawa in 1898 must have been an unusual place.