Outdated Advertising

Book excerpt: This outrageous collection of inappropriate ads will have you turning the pages and shaking your head in disbelief. Outdated Advertising: Memories from a Less-than-PC Era takes a look at print advertising from the mid-1850s through the 1980s with an eye toward ads that were notorious for their sexist, racist, politically-incorrect, or other wildly inappropriate content—or for just plain bad taste. Among the dozens of full-color examples, readers will find: a woman being spanked by her husband for not buying the right coffee the story of a mother having to turn her child over to an orphanage because her late husband didn’t keep up his life insurance payments Aunt Jemima declaring “Happy days is here!” because of her new pancake recipe doctors promoting particular brands of cigarettes the Michael Jackson Rainbow Brite portable record player with the copy line, “Gifts to keep children singing.” Advertising has changed over the decades—that is a major understatement. Despite the nostalgia of such shows as Mad Men, the outrageous images in Outdated Advertising show readers just how far we’ve come since then.