Woman's Day March 1951

This little kitty (who reminded me of our kitty, Trout), a 3 month old cat that belonged to the photographer, graces the cover of the May 1951 WOMAN'S DAY magazine. I picked this up in an antiques shop in SW New Hampshire. Mags back in the day used more cartoons and illustrations than ever, and let's just shine a spotlight on a few:


New Yorker cartoonist Sam Cobean puts meat on his table by schilling for Ken-L-Ration dog food, made with "100% real meat!*" Sam Cobean puts lovely energy into his cartoons. It was a tragedy when he died in a car wreck in Watkins Glen, NY at the early age of 38.

Take a look at his site. It's one of the best.

"*U.S. Government Inspected Horse Meat."



Above, an ad that was probably put together by the Johnstone and Cushing company, a firm that specialized in comic strip ads. In this installment, our title character get a buzz from Lipton that allows her to deal with the "Terrible Twins," Pete and Pat. Better living thru chemistry!

Actually, looks like Petey and Pat met up with some chick in the background of panel 5, and, off camera, she force fed the little terrors a couple mega doses of Ritalin.



In the middle of an article you get, as a lovely page break, a poem, with a hippo drawn by Richard Scarry.



This short story, "I Married a Folding Woman" by George Alna Brastow, complains of his wife's obsession with folding things and putting them away. Yeah, that's our man's biiiig problem: his woman folds stuff. The Eisenhower years! Ack!

Tom Funk's illustration is nicely done. The folded page isn't really folded -- it's all an illusion and an intentional part of Mr. Funk's illustration.



Above: THEY'LL DO IT EVERY TIME ala 40% Bran Flakes! Al Scaduto continued the panel for King Features, from 1989 to 2008. Al started with King right outta high school in 1946! The feature only stopped when he died in 2007.


Clear sunny, yellow margarine is the key to good food energy ... unless you live in one of those states where it's banned.

Some energetic figure work by an uncredited commercial artist.



When you are really want to impress those snobby ol' Thurston Howell types, serve soda crackers. Yeah, right!

We all know that if you want to impress those classy rich people, serve Ritz! It's named after that ritzy hotel, after all!

Click above to super-size, and ask yourself the same question I did upon reading the bottom line of this ad: Why oh why does Richmond, VA hate the Keebler elves? Somebody Google the living heck outta that and let me know, OK? OK!


This is all messed up. Give a dog a piece of dog candy and then he will stop being a dunce? Weird. Dogs are kinda dopey to begin with. Sweet, but dopey. Candy will just get a dog hepped up on sugar and he'll wee all over the lawn. Oh, and then there's the doggy dentist bills!

And what is the graph that's in the corner? Oh, I guess it's Charge Healthful Dog Candy's market sales.



Corporate America once again using the youth of this country to schill its products.


Above: I had to look at this for a minute before I figured out that the ghost is carrying out an old timey outhouse.

Above: ordinary housewives (you can tell because they're all in glorious B and W) agree that Fleischmann's Yeast is "Wonderful." Today, this ad would've been handed off to a celebrity like Paris Hilton whose reference to yeast is, well, entirely different.

That's it. I'll say no more.

-- Edited from a blog entry dated October 14, 2007