Few of us were alive and/or cognizant during the glory era of The Saturday Evening Post, the bedrock of the American magazine publishing establishment from, say, 1903 (when the mag famously introduced readers to Jack London's The Call of the Wild in serialized form) until 1969 (when a defamation lawsuit shuttered the publication, if temporarily). While the Post re-emerged in 1971 and has continued to exist in various forms since, it's more homage to its former grandiosity than it is vanguard of the magazine institution.
That said, the Post's innate aura of nostalgia (Norman Rockwell aside, please) draws one to its yellowing pages even today, and one can't help but breathe musty fumes of historical embers from one page to the next in, for example, the April 20, 1968 issue which I happened upon recently.
Most remarkable for a condensation of the grandiloquent Canadian-born economist and statesman John Kenneth Galbraith's novel The Triumph and a cover story on how America's police were honing their crowd-busting skills in the midst of the race riots of the Civil Rights era, one also finds comfort in the now-quaint historicity of its ads. To wit:
That said, the Post's innate aura of nostalgia (Norman Rockwell aside, please) draws one to its yellowing pages even today, and one can't help but breathe musty fumes of historical embers from one page to the next in, for example, the April 20, 1968 issue which I happened upon recently.
Most remarkable for a condensation of the grandiloquent Canadian-born economist and statesman John Kenneth Galbraith's novel The Triumph and a cover story on how America's police were honing their crowd-busting skills in the midst of the race riots of the Civil Rights era, one also finds comfort in the now-quaint historicity of its ads. To wit:
Ah, the Record-Club trap. Sure, you can get Sinatra for 99 cents. Then Dean Martin will cost you more.
This image tugs on more heart strings than you knew you had.
What happened to the guy who thought it was a good idea to print "Pay More" in size-144 font?
A 1968 ad that refers to 1907 as the good old days. Ah, the good old days.
These fictional barkeeping ballplayers are now a huge draw on eBay.
Click here to view the full album of 29 bourbon-shilling, muscle-car-bragging, cigarette-filter-innovation-boasting ads from the April 20, 1968 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.
{Related post: Life Magazine Ads: Year in Pictures 1988}
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