9 Ludicrous Trends In Advertising We'll Never See Again

As you may have noticed, one of the trends of old comic book ads was incorporating the product into an act of heroism in an extremely stupid way. Maybe you throw a pie to distract an enemy or quickly oil your hair so first responders don't mistake you for a criminal. The writers tried to create these showcases for the adventuring potential of their product, but it just ended up looking like complicated instructions on how to make dangerous situations worse. My modern brain sees these ads and immediately imagines how many women will be run over because of them. Which makes this hard-on both troubling and strange for me to bring up.

Seriously, why did everyone during this era add five extra steps to shoving people out of the way of moving cars? Who thinks sicking a dog on a baby in the street is a proper solution to getting it out of traffic? I swear if you search this writer's house he has pictures of traffic accidents hidden under his mattress. This isn't how you advertise shoes -- it's how you advertise tiny coffins.

Smith Brothers! The only cough drop that will make your armed sentry say, "I think I hear whispering and sucking sounds coming from the direction of that menthol and licorice scent. If only every day at my kidnapping job was this easy."

"Help, the ice is breaking! W-wait, are all you fucking people unwrapping Tootsie Rolls? A-are you going to try to like tie together a little rope or ... YOU'RE JUST EATING THEM!? You unimaginable monsters! Stop watching me DIE!"

As this ad explains, skinny girls don't get enough Vitamin B1, calcium phosphate and iron in their diet. Which is why, right now, every female reader just opened a second browser window to Google how to avoid Vitamin B1, calcium phosphate and iron. And these ads weren't for women with eating disorders or strange diseases. These were for healthy but lazy women who wanted a shortcut to getting fat but lived in a time before instant gravy had been discovered. In the 50's, when you asked a stewardess for a seat belt extender she'd say, "Only if you tell me your secret!"

These ads came from an era where a woman was so eager to please her man that she'd gain weight just so he got a better workout releasing her into the sea. It was a kinder time; a time when a man might tell his wife, "Sweetheart, I'll do that vacuuming for you. I didn't buy you a god damn pizza so you could move all around and burn its calories off."

I included this ad because now that you're fat, I thought your boobs might look too luscious. I have your back, ladies.

Maybe this is my pussified modern brain talking again, but I don't think it's responsible to suggest someone jump into a gunfight armed only with childhood obesity. Classic ads are filled with examples of adults encouraging children into dangerous situations, and once they're there, the children themselves make decisions that I would describe as suicide attempts. It's like the people back then had this absurd ability to separate fiction from reality that gave unmedicated artists to draw panel after panel of child-slaughtering gum adventures. But of course, no one was better at endangering kids than Captain Tootsie.

I'm not sure what's crazier to me ... the fact that the police have no problem with Captain Tootsie eating candy while he watches two children fight a man to the death, or that the fat kid's name is actually Fatso. This is something a draft dodger would write to convince a recruiting officer that he's too unhinged to carry a weapon. I carefully read every Captain Tootsie ad because I'm sure eventually one of the characters is going to say, "I'm writing this comic while wearing a cape made of faces." The rough draft of this was written in toddler skeletons.

This ad doesn't feature any actual dangerous activity, but it is the finest guide to getting your ass kicked I've ever seen. Kids, if you have a clari-flute and 15 minutes of clari-flute training, don't believe the people at the party cheering you on. This is a trick to humiliate you. And police, if you're reading this, find the person who wrote this and I have a feeling you'll also find where several of his missing classmates disappeared to.

Now see, having a kid lure a gorilla into a cage by running into it first is a plan that I don't see a single problem with.

In this one, Captain Tootsie teaches children, who have never even heard of stilts before, how to walk on stilts in the street. And when, surprise, a manure truck is about to run over a little girl, Captain Tootsie tackles her toward the truck. So what I want to know is, at the end of the day does Captain Tootsie return all of these kids to their parents, or does he leave the dead ones where they fell? Who are the ad wizards who came up with Captain Tootsie? I ask because I'm worried that they might really think they're wizards. The people around them could be in danger.

I might joke that Captain Tootsie is probably touching, definitely killing dozens of children, but at least those children don't exist. THE BRAIN made this bizarre child endangerment theme real by taking out full page ads asking for snapshots of children from around the country and posting them next to their home addresses. I get that the 1940s were a different time, but I think I speak for all of 2011 when I say what the fucking fuck.

Seanbaby invented being funny on the Internet when he made Seanbaby.com. You can follow him on Twitter or face him on Facebook.