Comic Ads of the 1960s
X-Ray specs, log cabins, 204 soldiers and more were promised to the avid reader. Comic books of the 1960s brought some fantastic ads with even more fantastic promises.
The 1960s were a decade of rapid cultural change and social upheaval for the United States. Our comic books took a turn in a similar direction as well, introducing bizarre new characters and books focused on the weird and macabre. The ads in comics took a somewhat different turn, no longer were live animals being offered as give aways or prizes. Sadly, gone were the days of mailing away for a live monkey.
The trend for ‘set up your own store’ or vending unnecessary seeds or other random items for the hopes of redeeming sales figures for even more unnecessary rewards continued from the 50s. Coupons still show a strong presence in the ads, thankfully it seems most kids still resisted the urge to cut up their books. Kids were offered cash prizes as well as rewards to set up a shoe store, sell seed packets or cheaply made porcelain knickknacks with happy mottos badly painted on them. The ads are veiled in the actual amount of sales you need to rack up in order to redeem your earnings for the best prizes, probably just as well as this information would have dissuaded kids from even trying.
The ads really did not change that dramatically from their 1950s counterparts. They still promised to make you stronger, taller and more attractive to women. More ads appeared for food and candy than in the previous decade, showing that savvy marketing companies were beginning to recognize the viability of advertising in comics. Gum and candy had been marketed for a while, but now cereals and more higher cost items were beginning to appear.
The majority of ads offer to end your days as a weakling, or make you instantly taller, or see through clothing and skin. It’s almost like the advertisers thought that their primary audience was a bunch of skinny, geeky boys…
The language and imagery used is very similar to the 1950s, ads required a lot of reading to get to the gritty details, many using language to obfuscate their actual details and requirements. How many kids sent away for these wondrous items, expecting to make $500 in a week only to realize they would have to sell 10,000 packets of seeds or 500 pairs of shoes?
More cross marketed items began to appear in the 1960s as well. Aurora introduced their super-hero model kits allowing kids to build their heroes in 3 dimensions. Superheros were not yet being used to sell products, but that was coming soon. The 104 soldier sets were expanded in both number and scope, to include Civil War soldiers as well as Knights!
During the later part of the decade, as the space race was gripping the nations imagination, advertising switched gears to leverage the astronauts popularity.
No longer was the skinning weakling getting sand kicked into his face on the beach, now the promise of making yourself “Astronaut-Tough” was the lure.
Revell models even offered a chance to win a full size gemini capsule. (It was probably cardboard much like the tanks and subs of the late 50s early 60s ads, but still a cool prize, even today!)
The artwork of the ads was still mainly illustration, with the occasional duo-toned image of the muscle man to draw kids in. As comics gained in popularity they created not only more chances for budding artists to get work in the comic industry, but also created work in the ad agencies for illustrators of the ads to run in the books.
Ads began featuring more colors as the printing process became more sophisticated and the pages of the comics themselves were brighter and more colorful. The ratio of actual comic pages to ads was still quite high, most books in the early 1960s only had 2-3 pages worth of ads. Kids got their moneys worth, even if the price rose from 10 cents an issue to an insane 15 cents! Some issues were even a quarter! Oh the humanity! The ratio of ads to comics remained mostly consistent thru the decade, this was to take a change as the swinging 70s loomed ahead.