14

Weight-Loss Soap

Via Laceyadjournal

You might be tempted to laugh about how childlike and naive people of the 1920s must have been to fall for a scam as ridiculous as "La-Mar Fat Reducing Soap." It's less funny when you think about how huge the market is today for penis-enlarging lotions.

13

Pepsi Makes You Thin and Beautiful

Via Starling-Fitness.com

12

DDT Wallpaper

Via Kidplanetblog.com

From the company that brought you asbestos teething toys, it's Trimz DDT children's wallpaper! Because it's totally intuitive that the best way to protect your children from insects is to fill their room with a powerful insecticide. Just make sure they don't lick the walls.

11

Chesterfield Cigarettes: Good for Your Throat

Via Nowpublic.com

10

Dr. Batty's Cigarettes Cure Everything

Via Historicalephemera.com

This ad, straight out of Contraryville, Opposite County, United States of Bullshit, advises cigarettes as a treatment for asthma, lung irritations and bad breath. Also, we suppose, they whiten teeth and make your wallet heavier, and if you smoke them for 40 years, they have been known to cure cancer.

9

JouJou Breast Supporter/Slicer

Via Pzrservices.typepad.com

8

Your Nerves Crave Ovaltine

Via Kitchen Retro

Here we were thinking that anxiety was a serious mental condition, but this old advertisement is here to set us straight -- nervousness is actually a sign of acute Ovaltine deficiency.

Ovaltine is portrayed here not only as a cure for insomnia (a bold claim for a caffeinated drink) but as a downright miracle potion, "supremely rich in nerve-restoring nourishment." So sleep soundly, stupid old-timey housewife. There's no army of rapists trying to break into your house, you just need to get back into the kitchen and fix yourself a malted milk.

7

Lose Weight, Eat More Sugar

Via FakingCreativity.com

6

McDonald's Is Technically Real Food

Via Blurbfromtheburbs

Why, it's just bread, meat, milk and potatoes! That's the same kind of stuff doctors are always telling you to eat. And our rendered bacon fat milkshakes are made from 100 percent real pig!

5

The Ford Pinto -- It'll Be Worth Something Someday

Via Ebay

4

Beware the Orphan Asylum

Via Atticpaper.com

The Prudential Insurance Company of America preferred to let this stark image speak for itself. Miss a payment on your life insurance and your wife will be forced to hand your children over to the world's meanest looking woman, and they will live the rest of their lives in a Charles Dickens novel moving around trash with a stick. Like a cliched reality TV star, Prudential isn't here to make friends. They're here for the money.

3

Juicy Fruit: As Addictive as Crack

Via Davetill.com

2

Overland -- It's Made of Steel!

Via Dave and Buster's News

This advertisement for the now defunct "Overland" car brand excitedly declares that "steel is 30 times stronger than wood!" And that's how Overland saved the world from road fatalities and revolutionized the automobile industry. Oh no, actually, they went out of business and nobody remembers them.

1

Sea Monkeys: Just Shrimp After All

Via theawl.com

Perhaps the most iconic bullshit ad of all time. Even in the 1970s, everyone had to have known the Sea Monkeys thing was full of shit. And yet, there was always that lingering feeling that for only $1.25 you could own a breed of intelligent mer-people who served you as their king. Add to that the promise that your sea monkeys would be "clowning around" and "learning tricks" for your amusement.

Instead, you got a packet of quarter-inch frozen brine shrimp. Because this is the real world, Timmy.

Matthew Culkin is a junior English major at Tulane University. Reach him for comment or writing opportunity at MRCulkin@gmail.com, or follow him at @MRCulkin.

For more ads that are terribly out of touch, check out 8 TV Ads That Hate Women and 10 Awesome Ads (For Traumatizing Children).

And stop by LinkSTORM to laugh at the past some more.

And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter to get sexy, sexy jokes sent straight to your news feed.

Do you have an idea in mind that would make a great article? Then sign up for our writers workshop! Do you possess expert skills in image creation and manipulation? Mediocre? Even rudimentary? Are you frightened by MS Paint and simply have a funny idea? You can create an infograpic and you could be on the front page of Cracked.com tomorrow!