Did you know that the Nestlé brand has been around since the early 1900s? By the time this magazine ad came around in 1956, the famous chocolate brand was already over 50 years old. They obviously knew what they were doing, even if this ad is lost in translation for us modern viewers.
There’s really no reason or context behind this advertisement. Why is this woman all dressed up? Does she really find Nestlé chocolate to be that eye-catching? We highly doubt it, but maybe that’s the point of the ad. Nestlé chocolate was for classy people, and they really wanted you to know, so they drew that very literal dotted line between the woman’s eyeball and the chocolate bar.
Desert Flower Beauty Ice
Makeup and skincare ads haven’t changed that much over the decades if we really think about it. While the products change, the sentiment stays the same: buy our products to look and feel beautiful. This 1958 ad for Shulton’s Desert Flower Beauty Ice shows off its new product as a feat of modern science.
Sulton’s Desert Flower was marketed as a super-modern, cutting-edge cosmetic line that used a fancy new commercial material called “plastic” for its packaging. The beakers full of mysterious jelly were also supposed to make the product seem more modern. We have no idea what was in this stuff, but the sludge in the container looks more like aloe vera than a brand-new mystery cream.
The Volkswagen Bandwagon
According to this Volkswagen ad, this new model is specifically created for wives. This VW is made of easy-to-replace parts and relatively cheaper than other models. Its fender is customized for women drivers. Now, should women who like driving thank VW for this personalization? No need to be thankful, girls. There are cooler cars than this.
This ad presumes that women are bad at driving because they hit anything that comes their way. Can you think of a more demeaning assumption than this? Women are statistically better drivers and navigators. In fact, men are more secured with higher insurance rates because it’s directly proportional to their accident rate. So, would you still fancy a Volkswagen?
Central Heating with a Touch of Infidelity
The 60s were a wild time in advertising. As we all learned from “Mad Men” and Don Draper, the marketing industry was dominated by men and hour-long boozy lunch meetings. Looking back, it really shows. This ad is for one of the most mundane things you could add to your home: a water heater.
Boring, right? Not in the 60s! They made it as suggestive as possible, featuring a seductive close-up of a woman inexplicably named Miss Meredith. What?! The thinking behind this ad was probably that men were the ones paying for a new boiler. So, why not draw their eye with voyeuristic attention from a fake single woman? It must have worked like a charm, honestly.
A Sparkling Peroxide Smile
It’s kind of comforting to know that people back in the 50s felt pressure to whiten their teeth, too. Maclean’s has been around for over 100 years and has been pressuring us all to whiten our teeth with their toothpaste for about as long. Their claim to fame is selling one of the earliest whitening toothpaste formulas directly to consumers.
It’s kind of amazing, really, how similar this ad is to many of the tooth-whitening adverts we see today. Although the styles and slogan are outdated, this 1951 ad still features a beautiful woman with a blindingly white smile. And yes, our modern-day tooth-whitening formulas still use peroxide.