I think you can still get these.
Thursday, May 26, 2011
Ad-ison Avenue: now and then
http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/
Do not adjust your set! If you enter this site, you may never get out again. ("We control the horizontal. We control the verical." Oops, wrong program.)
This may be the best internet site I have ever encountered: more than 100,000 print ads and posters from the 1840s to the present day, culled and collected from God knows where and lovingly scanned for public consumption. You even get to choose from two different sizes.
These ads cover food, fashion, medicine, pets, even space-age inventions like the computer, which in the 1940s filled a room. Each ad is a sociological treatise in capsule form. Some are extravagantly beautiful, some stylish, some stark. Obsolete products like "brain salt" mystify, and one ad from the 1890s recommends tapeworms to cure a weight problem. A baby glugs from a 7Up bottle, beer is recommended for nursing Moms (hey, even I remember that one - I got a lot of mileage out of it), and smoking is something that soothes the throat, eases asthma and keeps a girl slim.
I may never get out of here, though I am beginning to think I should stop saving images and just leave them where they belong. This site is simple and extremely easy to use, without any of the annoying bells and whistles and things popping up and squirming around in the corners that drive me mad. There is no long wait for downloading: in fact, no waiting at all!
It's a time machine, one that I will jump back into (like the Time Tunnel!) over and over again. Try it. It's a trip.