This might be the creepiest baby ad we’ve ever seen. This 1935 illustration combines photography, collage, and drawing to create an eye-catching ad for baby food. However, it’s eye-catching for all the wrong reasons. The baby’s head is way too big for its fake body, and the anthropomorphic can of baby food is giving us the creeps.
Maybe this was considered cute back in the 30s, but if we saw this ad today, most of us would wrinkle our noses. Don’t get us wrong. That baby’s face is adorable! It’s just everything else in this baby food ad that makes us pause and scratch our heads.
Foot’s Bath Cabinet of Curiosities
If this product existed today, there would absolutely be some weird influencer ads out there on social media. We’re not 100% sure what this is, but it appears to be some kind of moisturizing cabinet for your pores. Maybe it’s a 1900s version of a personal sauna? The answer is beyond us.
What, exactly, is in this “bath cabinet”? We don’t wanna know. It looks more like a torture chamber than the “secret of health” it calls itself. You can tell this ad is an early example of marketing because of how text-heavy it is. We take visual narratives for granted these days, but back in the early 1910s, that wasn’t the case.
The Modern 70s Woman
Looking back at old advertisements, it’s so obvious what kind of message a company was trying to convey. This old 70s ad for Viceroy Longs goes to show how smoking was marketed as something “cool” and “hip.” Tobacco companies had a lot more freedom regarding what they could and could not say in an ad for their harmful products.
This ad ran in “Redbook,” a women’s magazine. This ad is trying to convince women that if they buy this product, they’ll be just as sleek as this fictional female character. She’s not like other girls. She’s cool and chill and buys Viceroy’s, duh.
Seeing Double with Dior
Fashion, makeup, and trends change over the years. This is never more obvious than when we look at old ads and compare them to our modern-day ones. One glance at this vintage ad for Dior lipstick, and you immediately know that it’s from a different time. We don’t know the exact date of this magazine ad, but it was created sometime in the 60s or 70s.
The repeated mirror effect of the woman wearing Dior lipstick actually looks pretty cool. The soft filter over the photo, plus the color scheme of the ad, makes it look super awesome in a retro way. We wouldn’t be mad is this kind of ad layout came back in style. It looks so glamorous!
The Subliminal Messaging Craze
This image looks like a piece of 2010s indie art from Tumblr. It’s actually a movie still from the 1955 film “Picnic,” starring Kim Novak and William Holden. The movie still shows Kim Novak with the text “Hungry? Eat Popcorn” superimposed over the frame. This split-second ad was actually shown during screenings of “Picnic” in theaters.
Researcher James Vicary conducted a study where he inserted this ad and another one for Coca-Cola into the movie to see if viewers picked up on subliminal advertising. Subliminal advertising became a trendy topic in the 50s because companies thought they could sell more products. Consumers, on the other hand, hated the idea, and the whole concept quickly lost popularity. Plus, Vicary’s study had falsified results. There was no proof that inserting a split-second ad into a movie increased sales of popcorn.