The 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads Of All Time

Retro Comedy ^ | Wednesday, July 1, 2009

[the_devils_advocate_666]

What do murder, pedophilia, suicide and a baby tiger have in common? They have all been used to sell stuff in these amazingly disturbing vintage ads!

These are real, untouched advertisements from the good old days. It doesn't matter if it's lovely ladies or adorable clowns, somehow these old-time ad wizards found ways to traumatize us while pedaling everyday products.

Enjoy them now, call your therapist later!

15. White Bread Demon
"Bread is swell, but what I'm really excited about is eating jelly made from the blood of the innocent!"


14. French Suicide Sausage
It's enough to make you want to eat Kosher forever.


13. A Girl Around The House
It's nice to have a girl around the house... especially if you are a psychopath serial killer who makes women into rugs!



12. Chubby
Who needs self-esteem when you can have a free fashion book for chubbies? Also, proving that advertising weight representation has always been screwed up, the girl pictured is totally not chubby.


11. Christmas Weapons
The family that guns together, has funs together.



10. Eye patch. Shirt. Baby Tiger.
Sexy?


9. Chase & Sandborn Spanking
She totally deserves it. Seriously, what kind of woman doesn't "store test" for fresher coffee?


8. Fry's Chocolate Nightmare
Nothing wants to make consumers buy chocolate more than 5 faces of a sickly kid looking 5 different shades of miserable.


7. Root Beer Baby!
Mama, please DO NOT give your baby another glass of Root Beer. It is clearly doing something horrible to him. He is terrifying.



6. Locked Out
You better wash out your privates with Lysol, or your husband will install cartoon locks on the door.


5. Pears Soap Disaster
"Pears Soap- now with such a soothing lather, you won't notice that your baby has gotten into a horrible accident!"


4. Postage Meter Murder
"Is it always illegal to kill a woman?" This is a truly important question and makes us want to buy a new postage meter.


3. Shave Yourself
The old man baby's gonna sing karaoke into a razor! Hooray!


2. Baby Soft
JonBenét Ramsey, eat your heart out. (Too soon?) This ad makes us want to scream, gouge out our eyes and then barf.


1. Chocolate Poulain
Drink that cocoa, or this clown will murder you in your sleep.


Special thanks to Weirdomatic, Livejournal & the fabulous Plan 59 !

[the_devils_advocate_666]

Almost a month old but I didn't see it posted (search) and thought it would be a good Friday type of thread.

[Former Proud Canadian]

mark

[Constitution Day]

BUMP!

I am a BIG fan of Plan 59!

[gimme1ibertee]

WOW.....Just damn!

[petercooper]

bttt

[SoftballMominVA]

Some of those made me gasp — were they acceptable in society then? To show a man spanking his wife? A baby holding a razor? A tiger rug with a woman’s head and a man’s foot on it?

Woah

[ScottinVA]

LOL! The #11 to #10 sequence makes sense.

[FrPR]

Love the Daisy ad! ...And I like the spanking one, too.

The Hathaway spot was obviously done when David Ogilvy was at Touffou.

[Notary Sojac]

[KoRn]

.....

[retrokitten]

OMG that Love’s Baby Soft ad! And the baby under the tub! WTH??

[maggief]

[South Hawthorne]

Some of those made me gasp — were they acceptable in society then? To show a man spanking his wife?

Why even bother to have a wife if you can't spank her?

[Red in Blue PA]

Absolutely nothing wrong with this ad:

[Disambiguator]

This reminds me of the stuff on James Lilek’s site, http://www.lileks.com.

[retrokitten]

I know! “Is it always illegal to kill a woman?” WTH????

[nuconvert]

I don’t think the root beer ad is that bad.

[bondjamesbond]

I used to have a copy of the Chase and Sanborn "Store Test" ad hanging on my bulletin board at work, but the HR weenies made me take it down. They just don't understand irony...

[Sudetenland]

Okay, I'll bite.

14, 13, 8, 5, 2, and 1 are disturbing or just bizarre...especially #'s 2 and 13, but the rest are just consistent with feelings at the time they were published.

• How many times did Rick Ricardo spank Lucy?
• The chubby section was where I did pretty much all of my shopping when I was a kid, it was considered an inoffensive way of alluding to fat kids.
• What's wrong with a BB gun? Daisy used to be one of the most respected trademarks in America.

It is unfair to judge old ads by today's standards.

As for the foreign ads, well...there's no accounting for foreigners.

[the_devils_advocate_666]

You have to read the fine print to appreciate this #6. Click on the image to get a larger view (I couldn’t seem to get it to post here).

[windcliff]

ping

[Sudetenland]

Are you really that naive? People in America used to have a sense of humor and didn’t take offense at everything.

[Sudetenland]

It’s called humor. People in America used to have some...you might try it yourself.

[DollyCali]

oh my.. this is funny

bump

[CodeToad]

Those ads are only distrubing to a wussified populace.

[Sudetenland]

Liberals have destroyed the American sense of humor. It’s so sad that every one takes themselves so seriously.

[ScottinVA]

She seems a bit TOO fascinated by the knife. I don't think the jelly's a player.

[retrokitten]

You are so right!!! I don’t know how I didn’t find a baby with a look of pain on it’s face because it’s trapped under a upturned bathtub funny until you pointed out it’s humor!! Thank you so much for being there for me!!!

[Tijeras_Slim]

This one freaked me out.

[retrokitten]

LMAO! It can’t be easy to ride a Segway with wooden shoes.

[Red in Blue PA]

[Barb4Bush]

Wow! And I thought Viagra ads were tasteless.

[retrokitten]

Do you have text of it? I can’t get it much bigger either.

[Red in Blue PA]

[Red in Blue PA]

[SoftballMominVA]

Uhm....yeah...I would take offense at “Is it always illegal to kill a woman?” That ain't right

So why aren't their vintage ads of a woman saying “Is it always illegal to kill a man” with a woman standing next to a toilet seat with the lid up! And naive? no -- But I have forgotten how misogynistic we as a country used to be

[the_devils_advocate_666]

[Red in Blue PA]

Why don't we have ads like this today? (and I am being serious!)

[Sudetenland]

As I previously state...no sense of humor, none at all. Everything is sooo serious.

By the way, your original comment was:

"I know! “Is it always illegal to kill a woman?” WTH????

Which if I'm not mistaken is entirely different from the ad with a baby crying because it is trapped under the tub. Way to change the subject.

[Onelifetogive]

You have to read the fine print to appreciate this #6.

Truly cleanses the vaginal canal...even in the presence of mucus material...

[Red in Blue PA]

Love the "Accidental discharge impossible":

[GulfBreeze]

Am I thick? I did not understand how they were selling machines with that add. I wonder if there was more to the whole thing.

Yes... Everyone has to understand that some of these are funny not because the people founfd them funny but because you wonder why they ever went that way to begin with.

I would imagine some people were fired over a couple of these.

Also the little comments from the blogster are his/her interpretation. A lot of other funny thoughts come to mind on some of these.

[Red in Blue PA]

[retrokitten]

Actually, my original comment was:

OMG that Love’s Baby Soft ad! And the baby under the tub! WTH??

Then I commented to another poster regarding the ad about killing the women. But, hey, you find murder, pedophilia, and injured babies funny. To each their own.

[Sudetenland]

No, you just forgot how completely brainwashed you have become by the Leftist media. A vast majority of the women during that time were happy...far happier with their lives than women are today judging from the media and conversation. They understood irony and also were well aware that women of those days usually got there own back in those "evil" sitcoms you feminists so like to attack.

People were simply less prone to take offense at simple humor. They understood the difference between a joke and a serious threat...at least all but the feminist haters.

[NavyCanDo]

I love this one. from 1957

They’re Young... They’re in love... They eat LARD

http://slackerpedia.com/british-lard/images/couple.gif

[JacksonCalhoun]

Hopefully some day soon this ad will be seen as the most bizarre and undesirable of all.

[Red in Blue PA]

[GulfBreeze]

LOL... That CAN’T be real!!!

[Tijeras_Slim]

Just like a Glock ;)

Well, Iver Johnson did invent the transfer bar.