20th Century Alcohol & Tobacco Ads. 40th Anniversary Edition

In this collection of 20th century alcohol and tobacco ads, we see how the marketing of these productsspanned from the elegant to the offbeat. Each era’s ads are captured with images that were once icons, from the Marlboro Man to Spuds MacKenzie. Explore advertising in a time when even doctors recommended smoking.

Each era’s alcohol and tobacco trends are exuberantly captured page after page, with brand images woven into American popular culture so effectively that almost anyone could identify such icons as the Marlboro Man or Spuds MacKenzie, figures so familiar they could appear in ads without the product itself. Other advertisers devised clever and subliminal approaches to selling their wares, as the wildly successful Absolut campaign confirmed. Even doctors contributed to a perverse version of propaganda, testifying that smoking could calm your nerves and soothe your throat, while hailing liquor as an elixir capable of bringing social success.