Ads You’ll Never See Again: Kids Can Sell Anything

Advertisers have used adorable children to sell things for over a century. This gallery of vintage Post ads shows kids being used to sell some very kid-unfriendly products, from light bulbs and motor oil to shaving cream and cigarettes.

Bigger Problems Than a Corset

The lucky mother mentioned in this 1900 ad won’t have to worry about a rusty corset, leaving her more time to worry that her little girls are running around the house naked.

Bright Lights, Big Problem

This 1925 Dim-a-Lite ad shows that you don’t have to “mortgage your home and sell your jewels to save your child’s eyes” from “the danger of bright, glaring lights.”

How Children Are Like Cars

Why would a sick child want a sealed piston ring? According to this ad from 1938, so he wouldn’t need so much oil.

Don’t Grab the Wrong Bottle

No, you should not feed motor oil to a baby, nor should you fill your car’s crankcase with milk. That’s as true today as it was in 1938, when this ad appeared.

Sweet Nutrition

This ad from 1941 hopes you’ll get your baby started early on foods “enriched” with dextrose, which “increases their energy-value.”

Look Who’s Talking

In April of 1942, this baby tells a convincing story about how her family is happier ever since they switched to Palmolive soap. Even dad’s shower-singing is louder!

Pink Product for Pale-faced Pipsqueak

This ad from 1942 shows how Pepto-Bismol can help an over-indulging child get back to playing Tonto pronto.

A Smoky Christmas

In 1942, nothing said “Merry Christmas” quite like a young boy in a bellhop’s uniform perched on top of a gigantic pack of cigarettes.

Quite the Stocking Stuffer

During the 1940s, Philip Morris ran a whole series of ads featuring this young bellhop. This ad notes that cigarettes are “fine to give, fine to get,” but it’s unclear whether the boy is giving or receiving.

Editor’s Note: When we collected the vintage ads for this gallery, it didn’t occur to us that these images could be anything but what they appeared to be: A cigarette ad campaign that centered on a young boy. We were wrong. The bellhop in these ads, Johnny Roventini, was born in 1910 and  began working for Philip Morris as a radio and television spokesman in 1933. It seems he was a popular figure in his time — well-known enough even to get an obituary in The New York Times after he died in 1998.

According to that obituary, Roventini had “a pituitary gland disorder that halted his development…and left him with a 12-year-old’s body for the rest of his life.” There’s no telling whether readers in the early 1940s would have recognized Johnny Roventini in these ads or seen only a boy. Most likely, it was a bit of both. Still, we don’t expect to ever see a cigarette ad campaign quite like this ever again.

All-Nutritious Margarine

This kid really loves white bread spread with margarine, which, according to this 1953 ad, contains only things that are good for you. (Now if only we could teach him to chew with his mouth closed.)

Leaves You Soft As …

Sure, shaving with Barbasol will make your skin as soft as a baby’s, but with this 1953 ad, we’re all imagining the mess this kid will make when he gets his hands on that tube.

Clear and Present Danger

In the category Child Endangerment for the Sake of Advertising, this campaign might take the gold. This ad from 1953 is just one in a series that showed photos of children encased in cellophane.

A Shortening Life

In 1959, chicken fried in Mrs. Tucker’s Shortening was the meal of choice for freckle-faced girls in gingham dresses.

Polio Sells

In this 1960 insurance ad from Metropolitan Life, these boys aren’t so much plunging into the water as they are jumping toward the word POLIO. Children and fear: a perfect pairing for an ad campaign.

Hit the Road Early

Though the claim the Asphalt Institute makes in this 1960 ad would be disproven time and time again, this young driver-to-be from a land before mandatory seatbelts and child restraints is just adorable.

The Marlboro Baby

Even the Marlboro Man was once a baby. The early 1950s saw a whole series of Marlboro Baby ads, like this one from 1950.

The precocious child in this 1951 ad already knows what brand of cigarette he’ll smoke when he’s older.

Coming Soon from The Saturday Evening Post: Ads You’ll Never See Again

A special collector’s edition of The Saturday Evening Post filled with ads from the past that will delight, entertain — and sometimes shock — with images and concepts that are thoroughly inappropriate today. You’ll cringe when you see babies wrapped in then-brand-new cellophane. You’ll laugh out loud at Santa promoting a cigarette brand. You’ll wince at an ad that threatens housewives with a spanking for failing to complete their domestic chores. More than just an entertainment, the special issue offers a snapshot of attitudes about gender, childrearing, and marketing in an era that most readers will remember all too well.

It’s too early to order, but if you might be interested in purchasing this product, please click here and we’ll send you a notice when the special issue is available.