Here are some thoughts on dolls that advertise products and services. We are doing a display and will have a program soon for the public. The dolls and toys are shown with the products they advertise. Non perishable foods will be donated to the local food pantry after the program.
We are asking visitors to bring one dollar and a can of food. That food will be donated as well.
Advertising has gone on since the medieval guilds, when merchants wore specific clothes and colors to advertise their trades. Signs with graphics began to appear on shops, barber shops, inns, and other businesses. Taverns, too used them, and all these establishments used vivid, memorable graphics, partly because many people were not literate.
People also marked their goods, more for information than advertising, I suppose, but makers marks and hallmarks on silver and jewelry soon came to mean quality and became more attractive to shoppers. Think of those of us who shop certain brands, and the cache those brands hold.
Advertisements and broadsides became popular and prevalent in the 1700s. Mary Hillier and others even list toy shops in London from this era touting their goods in ads.
Advertising dolls appeared over 100 years ago. They are avidly collected. Our display includes Coca Cola items, Campbell Soup Kids, Kewpies and Jell-O items, Sour Patch Kids and M&Ms products, Hershey toys and dolls, Mr. Clean, and Many More.
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