Wednesday, September 15, 2010

RAISE GIANT FROGS and other astounding career opportunities

 

16 comments:

Deka Black said...

Some advertising at the pulps keep amazing me. Here we only have looked ads for watches, liquors and things like that. But this is just amazing.

Oh, and ona advert i keep seeing everywhere: Listerine anti-dandruff. Was an epidemic in those years? Seriously, it was?

Richard Prosch said...

Fun post. Ray Bradbury paid homage to ads like these with his story, "Raise Giant Mushrooms in Your Cellar!" I always wanted to send for the stuff in the comics, but my mom wouldn't let me.

Laurie Powers said...

Thanks for posting these, Dave. Gave me some ideas of doing some too. Lord knows I have a boatload of these ads.

Charles Gramlich said...

I fell for two of these ads as a kid, the sea monkeys and giant magnets.

Walker Martin said...

Thanks for the tip on these great ads. I like potato chips so I'll be ordering the automatic potato chip machine and it might be cool to marry a rich woman, so maybe I'll try that also. I just have to figure what to do with my present penniless wife.

Todd Mason said...

Well, Deka...Americans didn't always use as much soap and shampoo as they currently do...and pulp ads were cheap to rent space for.

The persistence of such ads into the 1970s and '80s, from the likes of the Rosicrucians (a staple advertiser in FANTASTIC to its end in 1980) and various shady outfits (in very inexpensive magazines such as the MAGAZINGE OF HORROR, folded 1971) are a continuing source of easy amusement...

Richard Robinson said...

The frog in that ad doesn't look very happy.

Todd, I'd forgotten about those Rosicrucians ads. Some kind of illustration in them, a pyramid? staff with rays of light, something like that? Yes, they were ubiquitous.

Deka Black said...

Thanks Todd ^^Oh, the Rosicrucians. Another ubiquous ad. I like to know the most advettised product in pulps, but i'm too lazy to search one by one.

Evan Lewis said...

I don't know which product was most advertised, but I'd say the most common type of ads were those offering job training or opportunities. I guess advertisers thought pulp buyers were loafers who should be working instead of reading.

Oscar Case said...

I answered one of those ads and received some Betty Page photos! Wish I'd kept them.

Oscar Case said...

Left off this sentence: I was about 15 or 16 at the time.

Deka Black said...

In spanish pulps the most commons were self-promotion of the publishers, watches or liquors.

Cap'n Bob said...

I just threw away my truss and I'm reading this with X-Ray Specs. Love this stuff, and so does my cherry blossom wife from the Orient.

Todd Mason said...

Indeed...I think Cherry Blossoms had to wait till the digests and their classified ads...

There were several Rosicrucian ads, Rick...my favorite featured giant gray globes with seagull wings, "Thoughts with Wings"...

Plenty of "house ads" (advertising the future issues of the magazine you had, and current or future issues of its stablemates) and bogus healthcare items, along with the job-improvement ads ("I Raised My Pay!"). A few watches and booze ads, too...

Kenneth Mark Hoover said...

haha this was great, thank you :)

Cap'n Bob said...

I dated a Rosicrucian girl briefly. They operate an Egyptian Museum in San Jose, CA and she worked there.