Sepia Saturday challenges bloggers to share family
history through old photographs.
This week’s Sepia Saturday prompt is a charming ad that
juxtaposes a diving woman and apples. If we did not notice that the box label
is promoting the Diving Girl Brand of California Apples, we might be here all
day scratching our head.
I have to wonder what the “Mad Men” who created advertising
for the General Baking Company were thinking about when they created this
ink-blotter advertisement:
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| Ad found in boxes of stuff in my grandparents' attic |
A loaf of bread and a Navy fighter? What – “Our fighters
are wholesome”? “Our bread is the bomb”?
Oh, I see - the FINEST plane and the FINEST bread. OK, well, that's cute.
EBay has another ink-blotter ad for Bond Bread
that features a different kind of plane. It draws a comparison based on LEADING:
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| Image from eBay |
The Bond bread ink-blotter ad is one of three ink-blotter
ads found in the STUFF retrieved after being hidden away for 70 years in my
grandparents’ attic. The other 2 are for local businesses in the town of
Shenandoah, Virginia where my mother grew up.
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| Owen Strickler was a friend of the family. Oh look - there's an ink smudge at the top! |
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| Higgs needed a grammarian who knew how to use an apostrophe! |
I was not familiar with ink-blotter ads until I did a
little research for this post. Ballpoint pens did not hit the market until
after World War II. Before then the fountain pen was the most popular writing
tool, but it dripped ink and the ink smeared. Ink blotters were the solution.
It was a small card of soft, absorbent paper. In 1885 Charles Murch patented a
way to adhere printable paper to blotting paper which led to this widely-used advertising
novelty.
By the way, a Bond Bread-Grumman Fighter ink-blotter is
selling on eBay for $15 and is not in nearly the pristine condition as mine.
Dive in to more fun stories and old photos at Sepia Saturday.
Wendy
© 2020, Wendy Mathias. All rights reserved.
Interesting to see planes and horses as advertising art. The "horsepower" of the battery explains the horse -- but the Bond bread and the plane? Were the pilots eating sandwiches up there? One has to wonder!
ReplyDeleteSandwiches - yeah, that must be it. They probably had no pretty girls handing out pretzels and peanuts back then.
DeleteInteresting vintage ads. I'm scratching my head about why they tied bread and fighter planes.
ReplyDeleteMy bread ad is not very clever in design. To me, a 4th grader could have created something better. But yeah - a plane and bread don't seem similar enough to put together in an ad.
DeleteHow cool you have a vintage ink blotter! Wonder if that ad with the diving girls was considered risque at the time?
ReplyDeletebetty
One of the other Sepia bloggers has a whole post with pictures of bathing beauties advertising fruit and vegetables.
DeleteThe tie between bread and air planes was apparently a take on trading cards only in this case, they were trading ink blotters. :)
ReplyDeleteI think you're on to something. I wonder if Bond Bread used other planes in other ink blotter ads.
DeleteP.S. I laughed at Molly's reply asking if the pilots were eating sandwiches up there. Good one! :)
ReplyDeleteCongratulations on coming up with such an unusual take on the prompt - I didn’t expect to see planes and bread. I would love to rummage through an ancestors’ attic to see what “treasures” I might find.
ReplyDeleteBe careful what you wish for - I can't imagine how much dust and asbestos I might have exposed myself to. And don't get me started on all the papers that mice chewed. So far I haven't died though.
DeleteWow...real ads on blotters. I remember getting calendar blotters from companies just before the New Year...they were free, and each month had a different paper page. I kept lots of notes on them, as well as appointments. That was back in my 'secretarial' years. These were real blotters you displayed, which must have been ink absorbent, and probably the same desk-blotter size.
ReplyDeleteOld advertising fascinates me. I must take some time to rummage in my mother's stash of papers. Who knows what might be in there.
ReplyDeleteIt's amazing what gimmicks that advertisers used to use to get the consumer's attention. And if you didn't like that brand bread\airplane ink blotter you could just turn it over. Now it's like swatting a swarm of mosquitoes to get rid of the pop-up ads while reading most internet websites. Thankfully us Sepians don't need to monitize our blogs.
ReplyDeleteI love how advertisers come up with connections between the products they are selling and completely unrelated objects...bread and airplanes, a horse and a car battery. Hmmm...
ReplyDelete