After a nearly seven year hiatus, it's time to take another look at old print advertisements! For those of you who missed my first two posts on the subject back in 2013, and I suspect each and every one of you, catch up on Part 1 and Part 2. Go ahead, I'll wait.
Read 'em both? Good. The ads I'll be looking at today are from this issue of TV Times from the UK, issue dated August 8, 1981.
Hey, that's Joanna Lumley on the cover. How fascinating. If you're not familiar with TV Times, it was (and is) Britain's television guide (I think it had radio listings as well). In 1981 it cost twenty pence, as you can see.
Prince Charles and Princess Diana had just got married, so you can bet there was a lot of coverage of that in there. Let's not make any comment about how that all ended up and move on.
If you've read my previous post about old ads, you'll recall me saying that 1980s print ads, in the UK at least, were unnecessarily wordy. That's not a bad thing as such, it was just an advertising trend I suppose. The ads would frequently have several paragraphs of text "setting the scene" about why the product should be procured by YOU. In this case: a tin of cat food. The copy states that cats are "only human". Better go back and study some biology, 9-Lives copywriters. You too can get a whopping five pence off with this coupon. Hey, that was a lot of money in 1981. Really? Nah.
Hmm, Philadelphia. The spreadable cream cheese was big in England in the '80s, and adorned many a snack table at a dinner party where the women wore shoulder pads and whatnot. Well, I assume so. There's a lot to catch your eye in this 'spread', haw haw!
This Clarks Commandos shoe ad makes elongated mention of the special way the soles were designed, because it is indeed germane to the product under discussion. If you'd rather not read about this then clearly you have no sole.
And here's the last one: a full-page ad for a six-pound handbag that has a novella's worth of text on it. If you don't know every single detail about this bag after reading it, such as the designer's dentist's name or the name of the factory where the metal studs were manufactured then I don't know what I can do for you.
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