

“Forty-niner” Street Advertiser in Studio, San Francisco — 1890.
Smithsonian American Art Museum purchase from the Charles Isaacs Collection made possible in part by the Luisita L. and Franz H. Denghausen Endowment. Not currently on view.
Via the Smithsonian — This toy “Cape Canaveral Satellite Monitor” bus is a tin toy produced in Japan for export to an American market. In post-WWII Japan, producing space-themed “tin toys” originated as a way to tap into an international market for “penny toys” or cheap playthings. By the late 1950s, however, this home-crafted industry had become a successful international business manufacturing creatively-designed, complex toys with moving parts and/lights that competed successfully with Western toymakers. This toy’s maker, Yonezawa Toys, Co., Ltd., was one of the biggest manufacturers in Japan of tin toys, many of which carried space themes. The design of this toy, which features lithography created to appeal to an American market, tapped into the American fascination with the new NASA human spaceflight program while also showcasing the toy’s battery-powered features.
I was positive this was a Photoshop job when I first saw it. Damn internet’s made me so jaded. But alas, this is very real. It was an upright arcade console made in the early ’70s, and as you can probably guess it played Pong. The game is probably deathly boring to play now, but that’s one hell of a piece of furniture.
(Mennen Antiseptic Baby Powder, 1943)
Well isn’t this just delightfully creepy! The copywriter for this undated ad for Hormel SPAM Spread was apparently into smearing “deviled luncheon meat” on children.
More like “luncheon meat from the devil” if you ask me.
(thanks to Vintage Ads)
(“How Do I Know It’s Love” — 1957 marriage pamphlet for teens.)