Individual Advertising Pieces

This is a curious circular put together apparently by a store with a main location and three branches in Boston and further branches in Westboro and Fitchburg. This 32-page stapled pamphlet combines various advertisements with vocal music, instrumental music, needlework companion, drawing lessons, and texts of fables. The fables, each with a moral, start on 7 and continue on every odd-numbered page through 29. There are no illustrations for the fables. I cannot find an easy match of the texts with a well-known set of fables. The surprise of this magazine for me is that its advertisements are for other merchants! An advertisement on 26 includes some claims with dates; it is from those 1881 dates that I guess that the magazine appeared that same year. For a picture of this advertising pamphlet, consult "Advertising" under Aesop Artifacts.

This little (3⅞" x 5") booklet presents a challenge, because it is both advertising for "Au Bon Marché" in Paris and a booklet in its own right.  Vimar goes through the fable in lovely duochrome illustrations.  Among the best illustrations is that of the stork trying to do something with the soup served in a shallow dish.  This version makes clear that some time passed before Madame Stork offered her invitation to Monsieur Renard.  The monocle does not help poor Monsieur Renard in these last pictures!  While the last picture inside the book has the two characters in the same space reacting to the vase, the back cover has the stork flying away while Monsieur Renard, hat in hand and downfaced, walks away from the encounter.

This card, 3½" by 5⅜", is beautifully executed, with excellent color.  The ant is working at a Singer sewing machine as the cicada approaches her.  Both are in lovely costume.  Bertrand tells me that this card is rare, and I can believe it.  The card is delicate.

This lovely little pamphlet, in surprisingly good condition, has the printed stamp on its back of Grant Ramsey of Grinnell, Iowa, one of the many grocers happy to sell Gold Medal Flour. The multi-colored pictures are excellent. In the first of the six fables, a tramp broke several teeth biting on a pie crust which he had expected to be hard. It had been made with Gold Medal Flour, and so his hard chomp was unnecessary! These simple stories show that Gold Medal Flour brings women proposals of marriage, praise, success, and prizes. The Moral to "The Fable of the Rich Man and His Appetite" is "Healthy Food is better than Health Foods." I will keep the extra copy in the collection because of its different-textured paper. To see a sample page, click here.

Two strong large black-and-white illustrations show a man wearing out the soles of his shoes and a woman having her hands treated. The man walked to work and in a month he saved almost enough to have his shoes half-soled. His wife shortly afterwards became economical too. She decided to save money on soap. And so she stopped washing her dishes with Ivory. At the end of six months, she had saved almost enough to have her hands "treated." They had become very coarse and rough. But besides saving 43 cents that she could not find, she had lost her temper fifty-two times because her husband had said things about the china and eighty-three times because her hands were "all shrivelled up." "So she stopped Trying to Economize on Soap." In typical Ade style, many nouns are capitalized for emphasis. Newman did the art apparently in all of George Ade's books of fables.

I cannot tell what magazine this advertisement came from, though it is clear that it was Page 75. AT&T makes the case that, since they are one system, they have the power of unity. The black-and-white illustration shows one of the sons trying to break the bundle of sticks.

Pamphlet 3.3" x 4.25" containing seven short prose fables with exquisite colored illustrations. The cover has a stage of animals with an audience of two children, the center page a rebus poem, the last page children's height being measured by a giant "Colgate's Ribbon Dental Cream" package ("Growing Up With Colgate's"), and the back cover the same two children reading "Fables for Me" and dreaming of animals. A random check does not place the texts among those I have processed. The fables are: LM, "The Kid and the Wolf," "The Donkey, the Cock and the Lion," "The Tortoise and the Eagle," GB, "The Peacock and the Crane" (my prize-winner for best illustration), and WC. This kind of popular and off-the-beaten-track kind of find is what I treasure especially! I crosslist this item among books. 

The cicada here has been driving around all summer and goes to the ant to ask for four new tires to make it to the new season.  The ant asks what tires the cicada used in the hot weather.  "Que sais-je" answers the cicada!  The ant finishes by saying that the cicada should have been as smart as she has been, to use Englebert tires!  What magazine this was excerpted from is not clear.  Apparently published either April 11 or November 4. 

This is a single-fold pamphlet 4¼" x 5½" containing one prose fable with Milo Winter's fine colored illustration. The back cover proclaims of Orange Crush "They like it, Mother" and urges "Give Children freely this drink so rich in vital Energy." The page indicates that there are four other fable booklets like this one.

This large and impressive advertisement works from La Fontaine's fable of the ugly bird stealing feathers to look as good as the peacock.  It quotes La Fontaine's application to plagiarists.  It then applies the lesson to those who say that they are as good as Duco.  Duco is the premier way to protect the finish of your car!

The fox eagerly awaits the tin of Euphon tablets dropped by the crow.  The verso details five products and has space for an addressee.  I am surprised to find the early date of 1936 on this well preserved mailing!

For once an advertisement really does appeal to an Aesopic fable.  In the fable this cat played dead in one of several ways, for example by hanging from a peg or covering himself with flour.  The wise old mouse knows enough not to go near even a dead cat!  The first of the four panels recreates the fable and applies it to a man who trusts his gas provider to also be his oil provider.  Better to trust Quaker State.

This advertisement may well strike us as funny today. The ad copy finds All-Bran superior because it has both the hare's speed and the tortoise's tenacity. When it comes to discussing delicate matters, it is often best to use a fable.

An advertisement for the National Shawmut Bank. The advertisement utilizes the fable of the Man and the Satyr to catch the attention of consumers. The ad has a printed ink drawing originally by artist Irwin Smith depicting the man and the satyr. The translation of the story was by Vernon Jones, and was published by William Heineman in London.

An advertisement for Grape Nuts in Ladies' Home Journal of June, 1944, plays on TH. A large, cartoon printed image of a tortoise and a hare is accompanied by a story reading “Exposed! Read the True Tale of the Tortoise and the Hare…”. The story plays on Aesop’s fable, claiming that, if the hare had eaten nutritious Grape Nuts, he may have won the race with the tortoise.

Curiously, the Fable Restaurant is not featured inside this brochure! Time has changed what would show up in this brochure today. The changes would start with the Gray Line! It is very nice to see that some favorite spots were already thriving fifty years ago. See also the postcards of the Fable Restaurant's murals.

This advertisement for the Metropolitan Insurance Company in New York City plays on the fable “The Tortoise and the Hare.” The image printed at the top features the animals from the classic Aesop fable in an intense race.  They play on the idea that the turtle won the race because he took life much easier than the hare, and so should those with high blood pressure.

I had known of Fable Cottage because postcards of it show up regularly in my searches.  I have learned now that Bernard Rogers, resident in the municipality of Saanich, built a home -- or homes? -- on the waterfront of Cordova Bay in Victoria, B.C.  Fable Cottage closed in 1992, and was barged to Denman Island the following year.

Unfortunately, "fable" here does not even indicate a story.  One could equally label these issues "myths."  My, my, the places that the word "fable" reaches!  Oil seals!

The advertisement plays on the circumstance that no one really knows if Aesop actually composed the fables attributed to him. The publishers promise to other authors a way to avoid this predicament. The image on the advertisement features characters from Aesop’s classic fables.

This black-and-white advertisement shows the tortoise reaching (a planet?) ahead of the sprinting hare. The page tells the last phase of the story and mentions Aesop. The style looks like that of The New Yorker.

This advertisement is extremely clever. The large sheet of heavy paper is folded down to a brochure of about 5" x 5½". As one opens the brochure, one finds four progressive views. First a simple Ulm woodcut detail without words invites a viewer to open the brochure from the left. The next view, of the same size, uses Calder's WC and proclaims "It wasn't an easy task." The next opening offers a view three times as large and uses a sole lion, an LM illustration, and Grandville's TH to describe the complexity of the task. The final foldout makes its offer with a clever remark for each of four illustrations. Thus accompanying Hollar's illustration of the crab and her mother we read "with lessons for parents and children alike." It is a joy to see ingenuity expended on a project like this! For now, I can offer views of only the two first panels.

This twelve-page pamphlet has nothing to do with fables. In it, Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company's Chemical Division advertises its product Perchlor to dry cleaners. Each of its pages presents a black-and-white photograph of a classical piece of sculpture, a quip by the subject of the sculpture, and a rhyming quatrain making the point, usually about Perchlor. Sometimes the point is about good salesmanship or other aspects of dry cleaning. Thus the quip for a picture of a caryatid is "If it falls off this time, Aphrodite can take her old Charm School and ..." The quatrain is "So much of her charm/Most every girl knows/Comes from dry-cleaning/Of her finest clothes." Hercules holds out his lion-skin and says "Look, Bud. The sign says 'one hour.' Now, either you have this suit ready or ..." The quatrain here reads "Fast cleaning action,/Economy,too/Are yours when Perchlor/Is used by your crew." Now, this is a piece of ephemera! I will list it also under advertisements and shelve it with the books.

William was a dear collector of things having to do with fables. Now in 2002, perhaps ten years after I received these things from him, I am finally able to include them in the collection's catalogue. The review highlights the acquisition of the ninth-century Phaedrus Rosanbo manuscript in Latin.

The fable here is a parody of Little Red Riding Hood, who learns, with the help of her grandmother, to ship cargo on Pan Am.

This gift from my sister is a riot! The one element of color in the black-and-white photograph works together perfectly with the outrageous pun.

What a lovely play on words! The restaurant offers "Nouvelle New England Cuisine" and invites readers to "Rediscover Classic Cape Cod in Wonderful Wellfleet!"

A first panel shows the tortoise lying on his back, with only the words "Yesterday's DURACELL battery." The second panel, on a new page, gives a picture—with the script "Today's DURACELL battery"--and a moral.

The advertisement starts with "Now that fast crowd you once ran around with is closer than you think." ©1988 AT&T. Two copies from different magazines.  On the picture itself is a handwritten note: "Six miles and I ran every step!!!" "Tortoise and Hare" appears not only on the red running shirts of the contestants, but also on their white race badges. The ad copy starts "Pick up the phone and catch up with your fast friends."

Now here is some fun!  Though the cheese is on its way down from the flattered crow, the fox has to leave for his Suze cocktail hour. 

The brochure advertises a fifty-minute children's opera available on tour. The cast includes Country Mouse, City Mouse, Tortoise, Hare, Cricket, Ant, Dog, Northwind, and Sun. How nice of Kelly to think of me!

This illustration introduces an article written by Clint Willis in the “Enterprise Private Assets” section of the magazine. It offers the reader the best investment technique to suit his or her financial goals. It uses the moral behind the classic fable “The Tortoise and the Hare” as an analogy for different ways in which to increase one’s finances.

Do those three words describe different uses of this drink, or are they "all in one," that is, a wine that is a tonic and is to be enjoyed as an aperitif?  As in the fable, the fox can only lick at the edges of the bottle made for the stork.

From one of my favorite places in the world comes this depiction, presumably of a parade float, showing GA with character constructed principally of, apparently, lemons and oranges.  It appears to be extracted from some publicity including the event, perhaps a tourist brochure?  We have at least one postcard from that 2000 festival; it shows "The Rat Who Retired from the World."

This advertisement presents Chantix with images of the tortoise and the hare.  There is no direct description tying the fable to the advertisement.  However, the underlying moral of the story plays on the journey to quit smoking.

Four critters grace this sharp colored advertisement: a rabbit, dog, crow with a pitcher, and a fox. 

It would be a pleasant -- and perhaps long? -- search to find what version of Aesop assigned this to a fable.  It's good to see Aesop acknowledged, even if we do not know whether someone named Aesop ever said this!

This poster is so attractive that it sells for high prices iln various art galleries.  One can distinguish the original from a facsimile like this by the lack here of a printer's name at the base of the poster front.  Notice that not only is the stork enjoying the water, to the fox's chagrin, but the same scene is also on the label of the bottle itself.  I have not yet been able to find an actual bottle label of that sort, but you never know!