3rd September 2010 / 10 Comments
Woman's Weekly /
4th April 1969
Well, this is interesting. I don’t recall the 12-oz jar being in supermarkets when I grew up, probably because it must have surely caused the sauce to go EVERYWHERE, especially if the consumers had the habit of giving the end a sharp slap, developed by the regular design. It wasn’t until my teens that I saw the squeezable bottles of ketchup, which at last gave some control over the contents. Of course, there was an option of decanting the sauce into the iconic tomato-shaped squeezers, but this probably wasn’t something which caught on in a domestic setting.
Tags: food, Heinz, retail
10th August 2010 / 3 Comments
Woman's Weekly /
11th April 1969
So there you are. The Flour Advisory Bureau are suggesting that if you don’t feed your kids bread, you’re a bad mother. At least pseudo-sciency bullshit used to be more clearly attributable back in 1969…
Tags: emotional blackmail, Flour Advisory Bureau, food, kids
4th August 2010 / 1 Comment
Woman's Weekly /
4th April 1969
Wow. A whole pint of milk? A day? Woe betide anyone who was lactose intolerant, but perhaps that didn’t exist back then. Check out the ‘4d’ on the bottle: I wonder how much money it took to change all the bottles when we went decimal?
Tags: food, milk, Milk Marketing Board
31st July 2010 / 4 Comments
Woman's Weekly /
4th April 1969
We’ve already got an advert from the Cheese Bureau on here, but I couldn’t resist this one. She doesn’t even look fat! What this ad fails to mention is that cheese has a fat content, so may not be the ideal slimming food at all…
Tags: blatant sexism, cheese, Cheese Bureau, dodgy advice, food, health, kids
6th July 2010 / 2 Comments
Woman's Realm /
6th October 1967
I have to say, out of the many fab adverts I’ve found in the course of doing this site, the ice cream ones are probably my favourite. I adore the packaging, and the sight of all those artificial colourings and flavourings are so evocative of my childhood. Yum!
Tags: food, ice cream, kids, Lyons Maid, retail
13th May 2010 / 4 Comments
Woman's Realm /
11th March 1967
Here’s another example of a drink being marketed very differently now than it was back then. Nowadays, Ovaltine is promoted as a comforting snoozy-bedtime drink, but here it seems to be shown as something more akin to Build-Up. Presumably they’re straight off to bed after she’s stopped worshipping at his feet for doing a few odd jobs around the place.
Tags: blatant sexism, food, retail, social history
11th May 2010 / No Comments Yet
Woman's Weekly /
18th April 1967
Horray! It’s another old school competition! This one is all about listing the supposed features of the car, plus a tie-breaker, although this article shows that this ad ‘talks up’ the car to an alarming extent. There’s a famous story about the Vauxhall Viva’s rear fuel tank exploding when the car took a shunt from the back, but I can’t find a citation on the internet. I’d love to know what the winning tie-breaker sentence was!
Tags: competition, food, motoring
6th May 2010 / 3 Comments
Woman's Realm /
11th March 1967
This ad attracted me because of the little illustrations around the text, but what struck me about this was the way that Shredded Wheat was marketed then the same way as Shreddies are now, i.e. keeping your loved one full until lunch. It’s especially interesting that the tone is the same as well, because Shreddies are aimed at children, continuing the trend we’ve seen in some ads that husbands were to be looked after just like you would a child. Given that Shredded Wheat is now marketed as a product which is good for your heart, it’s a bit weird to see the serving suggestion ‘lots of milk’n sugar’! Let’s hope the little diddums got off to work all right!
Tags: blatant sexism, food, marriage, retail
27th April 2010 / 4 Comments
Woman's Weekly /
11th March 1967
This advert wins on two counts: a) the cute kids, and b) teaching us what the name ‘Club’ originally referred to.
Tags: food, kids, retail, social history
13th April 2010 / 5 Comments
Woman and Home /
1st January 1962
Silly me, it’s ‘Ox Tail’, of course. The reference to the soup being ‘laced with sherry’ may well account for the expressions on the couples’ faces. Also, has anyone drunk soup out of a tin in a cup like that? I thought that was just Cup-A-Soup…
Tags: dodgy advice, food, retail, social history