Nothing dates an era more than advertising as it portrays the look and style of the day. Store advertising, those large stand-up displays with character icons on them, are thrown away every day of the week by stores that much prefer to trash them rather than give them to the collectors or people who just enjoy the fun of decorating with them.
      Do you remember Titus Moody? He was on the old Fred Allen Show and was the Downeast Maine philosopher of the farm.
    Titus: “My Hens were on strike. Wouldn’t sit on the nest so my wife had to sit on ‘em.”
    Fred Allen: “What happened?”
    Titus: “I'm a pah-pah. Cigar?”
     Moody went on to become the spokesperson for Pepperidge Farm bread. He stood in his apron with his straw hat. You could almost hear him say “Howdy Bubb.” Corny? No way. People loved it and the bread increased in sales.
       Titus stands in my kitchen — a cardboard reminder of when you went into a grocery store and it was full of groceries, not lawn umbrellas, garden furniture, CDs, Video Tapes and junk you can find in any large “Mart type” store. Titus represents the days when there was some personal service, and what you purchased was sold to you with some modicum of pride. There was a time you could walk into a grocery store and not have to read a million labels to see if the food you were buying was stuffed with poisons and bovine growth hormones and all types of other horrible things that could possibly kill you a few years down the road.  Will “Beware the food you are eating is known to cause cancer.” be stamped on all meat and non-organic items?
    When did the local butcher, baker, fishmonger, etc. disappear from the face of our country?
     We are still fortunate in NH as we have some organic farms, while Ben and Jerry, over the border in Vermont, have refused to use milk from hormone inflicted cows, in their ice cream.
      The early posters and store stand- ups of companies  like Ayers, Hoods, Moxie, Coke, and Sharples Cream Separators, demand prices from the hundred to the thousands of dollars. Why? The artistry, and period representation are as good as anything illustrators and painters in other fields were doing.  At the turn of the century many of the top artists that we revere today were dabbling in posters, advertising and postcards. Do names like Mucha, Toulouse Lautrec, Sager, and Privet Livermont ring a bell?
   There are many artists working today  in this same field who have not received the recognition they should because this is the age of the photograph. The world would be a very bleak place if there were no impress- ionists, no modernists, and no surrealists. Where would  advertising be without the zaniness of a Salvador Dali? Today, the artist is the photographer, not the person with a brush in their hand.
      Advertising caters to and feeds off of the buying public. That silly milk ad is a second time around and it was much better done the first time or maybe it is too dated today to be anything more than a bit inane. Walk into your local grocery story, look in the beer section, the cereal section, and then go looking for  the Keebler Elves, Poppin’ Fresh and anything else  that is an anthropomorphic figure that represents a product.
     Except for the fact that they are modern why should they be less collected in ten year’s time or even today, than Mr. Peanut, Speedy Alka Seltzer and Reddy Kilowatt? If you have a place to store them and if you can persuade some store manager not to put them in the shredder there is some grand advertising sitting in the stores which will represent the pop culture of today, and become the nostalgia of tomorrow.
    What about McDonalds? There are two schools of thought. One is they have gone the way of Hallmark cards and are producing so much stuff that except for the rare pieces or the early items it will never be worth a lot. Well it wasn’t very expensive to begin with. Happy meal boxes are much harder to find than the toys but they cost nothing and the toys only cost the price of  a food-like substance! If you pay two dollars and in a few years it is worth four that is a higher percentage than you will get on bonds.
   The other school of thought is that it is a great collectible with many people being able to afford it and kids can  collect with their parents and have a fun time. The art is as good as many a comic book and if you look at the earlier pieces you will see how things have changed with the decades. I remember being at Clark University many years ago and watching them put up the “Over One Million Sold” sign and all of us killing ourselves laughing. That seems like a long time ago, and if we had bought a hundred shares then we would be millionaires. Then again, the first happy meal box has sold for over a thousand dollars.
     Product advertising has been on billboards, in magazines, on the movie screen and on the sides of buses. Did you know that Claxton’s Fruit Cakes were the only fruitcakes sold at the 1964 World’s Fair? Just the use of a lacy table cover to place the cakes and boxes on is supposed to suggest luxury and elegance. Yes, the lace cloth is machine-made, but unless you’re an antique dealer you wouldn’t even think of that. I would happily make remarks about the inedibility of fruit cake but the Englishman is happily consuming one our friend Rebecca made so I had better curb my tongue.
      Food isn’t the only thing that is advertised. Stores wanted you to know what they carried and so did product manufacturers and sellers. Linen 1940s cards are highly collected for their stark graphics and 39 World’s Fair colors.  The Endwell Rug and Carpet Company not only did a post card but a matching business card.
    Have Buster Brown shoes been around forever? Maybe, but the company was much more visible when they used Buster Brown, himself, and Froggie. Are they dated and stylized? You bet, but because they are so dated they could be kitsch and revive him and let him meet his new millennium- self in a mirror. Some companies are reviving their old adverts and they are so camp everyone loves them. Can you just imagine the old Jack Benny ads for Jello being done today. I, for one, would enjoy hearing and seeing them again. Incidentally, many of the old radio (that’s television without a picture tube — just the images of your mind) programs are on tape and you can hear these ads and they are so much fun.
   “And all you Wahinis (girl in Hawaiian) when you go down to your local huma cowcow (store) ask for Jelloah which comes in eight delicious flavors.”
    Mind you, the old cigarette ads and jingles were so good and Drs. always endorsed them and told you how soothing they were to the throat...  those were the days when testimonials were actors, socialites and people in the news. Have times changed or have they just modified?
     One of the best ads of all time was done by Elaine Mae and Mike Nichols for Chesterfield Kings, only outdone by their bartender skit for Narragansett Lager Beer. Toothless old lady enters bar and asks for a Narragansett, bar tender replies in toothless talk. Sexy woman comes in and asks for a Narragansett. Bartender talks to her in normal voice.
  Toothless old lady: “Bartender are you making fun of me?”
  “No I'm making fun of her.” He nods toward  the femme fatale as he gums his remark.  Hokey? Watch some of these old commercials and you will see why they made the Hall of Fame.
     Good advertising can be in any medium in any era and if you recognize the quality of it you’re ahead of the game. “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” and I’m not kidding.