Long before there was the Marlboro cowboy, there was the Marlboro baby
Marlboro cigarettes are the world's best-selling brand. And for decades, the brand was personified by the Marlboro cowboy, and the mythical place known as Marlboro Country.
Marlboro was originally a women's cigarette. But it started losing market share, so parent company Philip Morris took one last chance to save the brand – and repositioned it to be a man's cigarette.
Their advertising agency chose the cowboy as the ultimate male image. But, before all that happened, as Marlboro was aimed at women, the print ads Marlboro ran were kind of shocking.
One ad shows two babies – maybe one year old. One baby says:
"Gee Mommy, you sure enjoy your Marlboro."
And if that weren't enough, the other baby says:
"Before you scold me, Mom, maybe you better light up a Marlboro."
Hard to believe a cigarette company would put babies in their ads. Those ads ran often in the 1950s – and could be seen in prestige magazines like the Saturday Evening Post.
7-Up ran some questionable ads in the mid-50s. One had a baby drinking directly from a 7-Up bottle, cradling it as a baby would normally hold a bottle of milk. The headline says:
"Why we have the youngest customers in the business."
The ad goes on to say:
"This young man is 11 months old, and he isn't our youngest customer by any means. 7-Up is so pure, so wholesome, you can give it to babies and feel good about it. By the way, Mom, if your toddlers have to be coaxed to drink their milk, add 7-Up to their milk in equal parts."
Hard to believe the soda industry would make a pitch that directly – and that boldly – to moms and babies. That ad is from 1955.
The headline on a print ad for DuPont cellophane once said:
"You see so many good things in DuPont cellophane."
The visual actually showed three babies wrapped in cellophane.
Another ad for Black Flag insecticide shows a baby with the headline:
"No flies on me, thanks to DDT."
The ad says Black Flag with DDT is "long preferred by housewives everywhere."
Believe it or not, all these ads were deemed acceptable when they first appeared. There was no discernable pushback – no demands to yank them off the air – none were banned. It was a different time.
Marshall McLuhan once said that advertisements were the cave art of the 20th century. That is true. Look at the ads from any decade, and you instantly get a sense of what was politically correct, what the current lingo was, what the latest fashions and most popular products were, and, a sense of the prevailing attitudes.
For more Ads That Could Never Ever Run Today, click or tap the play button above to hear the full Under the Influence episode. Find more episodes on the CBC Listen app or subscribe to the podcast.