“The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there”*…
The inimitable Tim Urban on the children who populate print ads from the first (the “pre-TV”) half of the 20th century…
Girls who are a weird level of hungry…
Kids with old faces…
Infants drinking soda…
Children at risk…
… and so much more: “Creepy Kids in Creepy Vintage Ads,” from @waitbutwhy.
* L.P. Hartley, The Go-Between
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As we contemplate change, we might recall that it was on this date in 1941, before a Brooklyn Dodgers–Philadelphia Phillies game at Ebbets Field, that NBC-owned station WNBT in New York aired the first (legal) television commercial– The “Bulova Time Check.” Bulova paid $4 in air fees plus $5 in station fees; there were about 4,000 TV sets in the New York Area at the time. The average cost of a 30-second spot in the broadcast of the last Super Bowl was $7,000,000.
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