Intestinal Chimney Sweeps

Back in the early twentieth century, the French laxative Jubol ran an ad campaign that featured tiny chimney sweeps climbing up into intestines and scrubbing them out.

It reminds me of that old urban legend about Richard Gere and the gerbils.

Image source: vintage-ads — historical source: Rire - Dec 14, 1918

"Voila le petit ramoneur de l'intestin..." (Here's the little chimney sweep of the intestines)
L'Illustration - June 10, 1916

Posted By: Alex - Sat Mar 28, 2020 - Comments (2)
Category: Health, Advertising, 1910s

Follies of the Madmen #470

Imagine your lungs as a barn...

Posted By: Paul - Sat Mar 28, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: Addictions, Business, Advertising, Tobacco and Smoking, Surrealism, Twentieth Century

Anti-Fut-Swet

It "Hardens the feet".

Chattanooga Daily Times - June 11, 1898

Posted By: Alex - Fri Mar 13, 2020 - Comments (5)
Category: Advertising, Nineteenth Century, Feet

Follies of the Madmen #469

Why the dog?



Source.

Posted By: Paul - Thu Mar 12, 2020 - Comments (6)
Category: Business, Advertising, Fashion, Dogs, 1960s

The Most Useful Mayonnaise

How useful is your mayonnaise? Not as useful as Durkee's!

San Francisco Examiner - Aug 21, 1927

San Francisco Examiner - July 3, 1927

Posted By: Alex - Thu Mar 05, 2020 - Comments (5)
Category: Food, Mayonnaise, Advertising, 1920s

Follies of the Madmen #468

Source.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Mar 02, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: Business, Advertising, Excess, Overkill, Hyperbole and Too Much Is Not Enough, Fashion, 1950s

Whose fault is it when your husband is cross at breakfast?

Answer (according to 1920's ad men): It's the wife's fault for serving him coffee or tea.

Strange, because I'm pretty crabby in the morning if I don't have coffee.

The Helena Star - Oct 6, 1921

Posted By: Alex - Fri Feb 28, 2020 - Comments (4)
Category: Advertising, Husbands, Wives, 1920s

Follies of the Madmen #467

This is asking an awful lot from a mere bathrobe, isn't it?



Source.

Posted By: Paul - Mon Feb 24, 2020 - Comments (1)
Category: Business, Advertising, Excess, Overkill, Hyperbole and Too Much Is Not Enough, Fashion, 1950s

Advertising Chairs

Back in 2018, Paul posted about an "advertising chair" patented in 1910. As a person rocked in it, advertisements scrolled in the armrests.

Patent No. 958,793 (1910)

I recently discovered that this invention wasn't a one-off. In the early twentieth century, inventors were actively competing to perfect advertising chairs and inflict them on the public. I was able to find four other advertising chair patents (and there's probably even more than this). To my untrained eye, they all look very similar, but evidently they were different enough to each get their own patent.

Patent No. 934,856 (1909)

Patent No. 993,397 (1911)

Patent No. 1,094,154 (1914)

Patent No. 1,441,911 (1923)

A newspaper search brought up an 1895 article that described advertising chairs as the "latest in advertising." It also explained that the concept was to put these chairs in various places where there were captive audiences, such as "hotel lobbies, public libraries, depots and in fact in all places where tired humanity is used to taking a quiet little rest during the day."

Minneapolis Star Tribune (Dec 8, 1895)

But although entrepreneurs may have been keen to build advertising chairs, the public was evidently far less enthusiastic about them. An editorial in the Kansas City Journal (reprinted in Printer's Ink magazine - Jan 2, 1901) described an advertising chair as "comfortable enough physically, but mentally it is a torture... Just who invented the advertising chair is not known. He has no reason to be proud."



There must have been a number of these advertising chairs in existence, but I'm unable to find any surviving examples of them. Searching eBay, for instance, only pulls up chairs with advertisements printed on them.

Posted By: Alex - Tue Feb 18, 2020 - Comments (4)
Category: Furniture, Inventions, Patents, Advertising

Follies of the Madmen #466

This was part of a campaign that made far-fetched comparisons between the animal kingdom and a desire to eat Jello.

Source.

Posted By: Paul - Sat Feb 15, 2020 - Comments (0)
Category: Animals, Business, Advertising, Food, 1950s