Monday, November 14, 2016

Beautiful Car Ads from the past

Tuesday, November 14, 2016
Cloudy with Sunny Periods
9 Celsius 48 Fahrenheit



Beautiful Car Ads
From the Past

I was browsing the Internet for old toy cars when one of the search results happened
to be a nice old magazine advertisement for "old cars". I guess the search engine is not yet 
100% in its' search results.  So from there I decided to do another search for old car advertisements or something to that effect, and these results yielded a website called oldcaradvertising.com.  That site had car ads from the 1870's-2000's. The problem here was that the photo were too small to use, and the second problem was to see the original photos, I had to go to ebay. I clicked on one of the photos and arrived at an ebay seller with the moniker (nickname) of 237. I was given permission to use the photos there and that's what I'm presenting for today. 237 also has other magazine pages for sale, but I focussed on the cars. 

If you look at the photos, you'll see that the magazine pages are placed on top of a black paper or cardboard.  This ebay seller or his photographer certainly know how to photograph magazine pages.If you don't place a black cardboard under the photo, the images and type will come through the back of the page and interfere with the from viewing page.



As you can see if you've browsed the images before reading this, the car ads were  for the
 people who were well off financially. In the 1920's-1930's wagons were quite low for the average person. And don't forget, the Great Depression hit North America  between 1929-1932,as well as the entire world.

The drawings (rarely were photographs used), usually have luxurious settings, with people pressed quite well. Notice that in the screen-capture above and below that theme are wearing a tuxedoes and the man below is wearing a top hat.
 The screen-capture below has 2 images. The top image is of a soldier being bestowed a title for his achievements, and "quality of work and service". The type (writing) also refers back and forth from the king and soldiers to the Packard car linking both to "quality of work and service".
The opening words of the type say it all for this advertisement:
"Packard, like its patrons, demands and selects only the best the world provides." In this ad, the two
lades are being shown a luxurious coat in a "fancy" shop, as you can tell from the interior furniture, and the well-dressed salesman.


ladies
Once again, there is that association of well-to-do people dinging out, and the luxurious limousine 
with an  open-air driver seat for a chauffeur. Cars like these were very expensive, considering the "average" person was earning for the 1920's was about $1300.00 US in the United States, while a car like the one below was probably about $5000-$6000.00.


Below is an actual photograph. It's in colour, but there was no colour film in the 1920's!
I assume that the photo was hand-coloured with transparent oil paints, then photographed to yield 3 colour-separations for the printing (like the lithography of tin toys in those days).

Once again, the emphasis is on well-dressed and probably earning a good salary 
in order to afford even an economical Ford Car.


 Below is an ad for a car company called "Century". The people in the car are again well-dressed.
THe theme of this advertisement is that the "Century" car is in demand around the world, and you can see one of these cars being loaded on to a shop.

The Dodge Brothers car below is again set in a nice area probably a hotel or fancy restaurant. The type is discussing the extra power that this car has, and the fact that this car is very luxurious.

Looking at these photos makes you realize that most people at these times did not have cars. But at least they could afford to buy  toy cars (cast iron or pressed steel, or lithographed tin) for their children. You could say, that these families did have a car "of sorts!".

Thanks for dropping by, 
and as always,
Have a great part of the day or night,
Wherever you may be.

toysearcher@gmail.com
Stacey Bindman





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