10 Retro Ads That Made Women Look Like Complete Idiots

Some Mad Men were very, very Bad Men.

1. Charles Antell’s Formula 9 shampoo, 1952

Three methods of suicide!
Sweetheart, you better put that small-caliber girlie gun in your mouth, to make sure. Or just pick up some new shampoo.
A-mazing.

2. Electrolux, 1932

Bodiless Horsewoman Refuses to Buy Electrolux Fridge.
In Mrs. Secretariat’s defense, the gas refrigerator never did take off.

3. Anacin, 1969

Copy: “having to do the same dull work day after day—is a mild form of torture. This can bring on…what is now known as [DUN DUN DUN] ‘housewife headache.’” Nice Photoshoppy headache-y collage work!
Stupid bored, emotionally fatigued HOUSEWIFE.

4. Volkswagen, 1964

“Sooner or later…”
“Women are soft and gentle, but they hit things…She can jab the hood. Graze the door. Or bump the bumper…”
Give me the keys and go vacuum, Mrs. McCrash.

5. Lestoil, 1968

What does the future hold, ladies?
DIRT!
That pesky Moon dust ain’t gonna clean itself, subservient housewives.

6. Midol, 1974

That’s right, girls — be the you HE likes. Even if your Guy (note cap “G,” crampy chicks) wears patchwork-quilt shirts and looks like Ally Sheedy.

7. Listerine, 1932

That deafening sound you hear is the collective gargling of 5,000,000 paranoid young women of “marriage-able age.”

8. Listerine, 1946

Sorry for the low-res scan, but the copy starts:
“Will the law ever require women who are careless about their breath to wear bells to warn others of their approach? It’s not a bad idea.”
Let’s make a big honking cowbell!

9. Tab, 1969

Video available at: http://youtube.com/watch?v=uDBJ2ktSZpI.

LISTEN TO THAT SONG.
Print ad below.

10.

STICK IN HIS MIND!
(He looks like her father.)