The Fishing Advertisement: Planter's Peanuts (2001)

The following ad is proof that is doesn't have to be old to be a great advertisement. This one is from 2001 and features some enterprising Minnesotans ice fishing. It's a great ad.



-- Dr. Todd

The Fishing Advertisement: Texaco (1950)

What goes better together than fishing and enormous multi-national oil companies? Nothing, I say. Here Texaco (The Texas Company) touts "Custom-Made" Halvoline Motor Oil by leading with a salmon fishermen on the legendary Restigouche. "Royal Rogan Gray Ghost, salmon fly, made especialy to intrigue the great silver game fish when he swims New Brunswick's fabled Restigouche River. Created by Alex Rogan (of Alex Taylor & Company, New York), famous flytier, whose family has made flies since 1655."

What any of that has to do with motor oil is beyond me, as Halvoline was produced by the millions of gallons. It's a very bizarre ad, that's for sure.



-- Dr. Todd

The Fishing Advertisement: Kool Cigarettes (1935)

A friend of mine chided me recently about why I never run any ice fishing ads in my semi-regular Fishing Themed Advertisement series. Well, I’ll rectify that here.

We met Kool’s fishing penguin back here. I stand by everything I wrote. You may think you’re cool, but you’ll never be “Penguin Ice Fishing in a Jaunty Scarf and Matching Mittens while Smoking a Cigarette” cool.



Like the other ad this dates from 1935 and it is pretty damn cool, if you ask me.

— Dr. Todd

The Fishing Advertisement: British Travel (1948)

This April 12, 1948 Time Magazine full page advertisement is an interesting piece of travel history. Britain in 1948 was in now way, shape, or form recovered from World War II -- they did not even go off war rationing until the early 1950s. Yet here we see the British Travel Association (BTA) advocating for Americans to travel to Scotland to engage in salmon fishing, which was in the pre-war era a rather important part of the local economy. So the fact that the BTA was actively seeking to drum up tourism for a battered island nation is pretty cool.



-- Dr. Todd

The Fishing Advertisement: Pabst Blue Ribbon (1950)

This is one of my favorite fishing advertisements. It features famed actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. fishing for marlin and tuna off the legendary Catalina Island with a huge Penn Senator (14/0 or 16/0) reel. It's got everything you would want in a neat ad, especially a celebrity angler like Fairbanks. The son of his legendary namesake father, he was in over fifty films and was a decorated veteran of World War II. He loved to fish off California's waters, and was a frequent visitor to The Tuna Club. This 1950 advertisement for Pabst was run in both color and black-and-white.



-- Dr. Todd

The Fishing Advertisement: Baker's Breakfast Cocoa (1924)

Baker’s Breakfast Cocoa, as seen in this charming 1924 advertisement, was long a staple in American cupboards. Interestingly, the firm was one of the first to be sued for false advertising, having claimed that it was processed to have “treble the strength of cocoa as usually prepared” and “has more than three times the strength of cocoa mixed with starch, arrow-root or sugar.” The state of New Hampshire investigated the firm and found that Baker’s, in the first case, was lying, and in the second case were misleading. The report concluded “The sample is further misbranded on account of the claims for solubility.”



Regardless, this is a cool ad, and one that represents a lost time and place — who today would let a child swim unsupervised?

— Dr. Todd

The Fishing Advertisement: Old Gold Cigarettes (1939)

The Petty Girl became an American institution thanks to advertisements like this one, from the July 17, 1939 Saturday Evening Post. George Brown Petty IV was already well-known by this time (he began his series of "Petty Girls" for Esquire in 1933), but as he more finely honed his skill in pin-up air brush art, he would happen to peak at the exact right time, just as America was about to enter the Second World War. Few G.I.s did not have a Petty or Vargas print during those war years, art work produced specifically as pin-ups. But the earlier advertisements like this one show that the Petty style was already commonplace by the time the war began.

Interestingly, Petty (who used his daughter as the model for much of his art) maintained a hunting and fishing lodge near Hayward, Wisconsin, near where I grew up. While he was mostly interested in hunting, he did do some angling in those musky waters from time to time.

As for his artwork, I'll have to go with what George Lois, the famed art director at Esquire, once said: "I'm going on the record to swear that George Brown Petty IV consistently created better-designed women than God..."



-- Dr. Todd

The Fishing Advertisement: Employers Mutual of Wausau (1956)

This week in The Fishing Advertisement we get a full page advertisement from the October 22, 1956 Time Magazine for Employers Mutual of Wausau. It features fishing, probably because Wausau was also home to the Marathon Bait Company. It's a neat ad that showed how embedded fishing was in American culture.



-- Dr. Todd

The Fishing Advertisement: Massachusetts Mutual (1961)

The following advertisement for the Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. of Springfield features a classic line art drawing by the great Norman Rockwell. I have been thinking about Rockwell since last week my good friend Buckley gifted me a vintage cup and saucer with a Rockwell fishing scene on it. Rockwell, of course, was best known for his Saturday Evening Post covers, some of them fishing scenes. He seemed to like above all else the "barefoot boy with cane pole" motif in his paintings, like the drawing here.

-- Dr. Todd

The Fishing Advertisement: Guaymas, Mexico

This 1935 ad shows a very early promotion of big game angling in Mexico. It touts the virtues of the Hotel Playa de Cortes on the west coast of Mexico -- accessible by the Southern Pacific Railroad. It's a really cool ad with a classic art deco feel.



-- Dr. Todd

The Fishing Advertisement: Ford (1941)

This week in The Fishing Advertisement we feature a great full page ad from 1941 from Ford. It asks "How many $5000 cars can you name?" Today, that is $79,100! That's an expensive car. This ad features a truly nice painting of a pair of gentleman preparing for a fishing trip in their new Ford touring car. At nearly $80,000 they should have been able to afford the best tackle available!



-- Dr. Todd