Pimp My Chair
Product: Foot’s Chair-Couch
Date: 1911
La-Z-Boy ain’t got nothing on this bad boy. In fact, years before La-Z-Boy came on the scene, there was already a deluxe recliner called the Burlington. Check it out:
- The back goes up and down at the press of a button
- The arms swing out for make getting in and out easy
- The leg rest goes up and down so you can lounge at whatever angle you please. Don’t want a foot rest? It slides away.
- It comes with four attachments: a table, a tray to hold your book upright, a side tray for your drinkie-drinks, and a light. All adjustable, all removable.
As if all that weren’t enough, the upholstery is also “exceptionally soft and deep” with spring elastic edges. This thing’s so comfortable, it’s not even sure if it’s a chair or a couch — it’s a chair-couch.
Yet where is this company today? A Google search on “Foot’s chair-couch” and several variants yields nothing, not even historical archives or collector groups. The La-Z-Boy people claim to have created “the first chair of its kind” when they released their upholstered recliner in 1929. I think not. But what’s that they say about the winners writing history? Foot’s is now just a Footnote.
Click to enlarge.
Technorati Tags: antique advertising, reclining chair, La-Z-Boy, Foot’s chair-couch, antique furniture
Your Gel, It Smell
Product: Royal Gelatin
Date: 1933
Do you ever stop to think what gelatin is made from? Many people think horse’s hooves. It’s a common misconception, but no, gelatin cannot be made from hooves. What it does contain is not actually any more palatable: cattle and pork bones, pig skins, and cattle hides.
These days, of course, gelatin’s image is carefully groomed. There is nothing in the product or the packaging that even remotely hints at its gruesome ingredient list.
But back in the ’30s, consumers weren’t quite so lucky. It seems that some brands of gelatin gave off a rather, er, noxious smell. This ad for Royal Gelatin repeatedly describes their competitors’ aroma as “gluey.” The smell must have been quite pronounced and quite unpleasant for Royal to play up their fruity aromas as a key point of difference.
I wonder if they used the word “gluey” to tap into the public’s misconception that horse’s hooves were an ingredient in “inferior” brands of gelatin, since in the early 20th century, horse hooves and bones were often used as a source of glue.
Bon appetit?
Click to enlarge.
Technorati Tags: vintage advertising, antique ad, Royal Gelatin, animal by-products
The Revolution Will Be…Plaid?
Product: h.i.s. Post-Grad Slacks
Date: 1969
Oh my my my. There’s so much you could say about this ad, and yet it’s almost better to let it speak for itself. Published in a Playboy magazine at the tail end of the ’60s, it was intended to epitomize all that was cool.
Technorati Tags: vintage advertising, 1960s, fashion, black power
65 — It Could Happen to You
Product: Financial planning
Date: 1927
Most of us expect — barring unfortunate and unforeseen circumstance — to live to a ripe old age. To at least 80, maybe 90. Heck, some financial planners caution us to plan on living 100 years or more.
We know that our retirement years will probably start around 65. And we all know the drill about saving now to sustain ourselves financially during those years.
But saving for retirement hasn’t always been a given.
This ad from 1927 plainly shows that many people didn’t plan for retirement because they didn’t think they’d be alive past 65.
Yet things were beginning to change, and the financial services companies were urging people to consider the statistics:
Sixty-three per cent of the 40-year-old men of today will be living at age 65.
To provide for yourself if you live to old age is as necessary as to provide an estate for your family. (emphasis from the ad)
If you lived to old age. A 63% survival rate as surprising. Old age at 65.
What a tremendous shift in cultural thinking from then to now. Improved nutrition, access to medicine, and a myriad of other blessings, big and small, have extended our life expectancies by more than a third in less than 100 years. Mind-boggling.
Click to enlarge.
Technorati Tags: antique advertisement, vintage advertising, retirement, life expectancy
