Forgotten Advertising Characters of the Era

[Fading Fast]

Does anyone have any idea what this is about or what it's advertising?

Whatever it is, it's very cool, very Fedora Lounge.

 

[2jakes]

Does anyone have any idea what this is about or what it's advertising?
View attachment 125634
Whatever it is, it's very cool, very Fedora Lounge.

 

[3fingers]

Does anyone have any idea what this is about or what it's advertising?
View attachment 125634
Whatever it is, it's very cool, very Fedora Lounge.

I think those are modern. I've seen others and it's joking about cats making bad decisions, usually involving alcohol.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Cats don't make bad decisions. They mean to do it that way all along.

 

[2jakes]

These aren't vintage, they're by Ravi Zupa and Arna Miller, & are available for purchase.

 

[2jakes]

"I'm Buster Brown and I live in a shoe. That's my dog, Tige &
he lives there too!"

In 1904, the World’s Fair was held in St. Louis. The Brown Shoe Company built a model of a state-of-the-art shoe factory so that visitors could witness how shoes were made. While visiting other exhibits at the fair, John Bush, the Brown employee, came upon Richard Fenton Outcault, the cartoonist who was famous for the exceedingly popular Hogan’s Alley comic strip. Outcault was a smart self-marketer. At the fair, he rented a booth to sell licensing rights to his latest characters, Buster Brown and his dog, Tige. To attract attention to the booth, he hired a little person and the fellow’s dog to dress as Buster Brown and Tige.

Bush realized that connecting the Buster Brown character and the

Brown Shoe Company could be a hit. Bush paid Outcault $200 for licensing rights to use the Buster Brown name and image on children’s shoes. Buster Brown had a sweetheart named Mary Jane, so the Brown Shoe Company also bought licensing rights for “Mary Jane” for their line of girls’ strap shoes

 

[2jakes]

Jesse White.

 

[LizzieMaine]

"I'm Buster Brown and I live in a shoe. That's my dog, Tige &
he lives there too!"
View attachment 125713

In 1904, the World’s Fair was held in St. Louis. The Brown Shoe Company built a model of a state-of-the-art shoe factory so that visitors could witness how shoes were made. While visiting other exhibits at the fair, John Bush, the Brown employee, came upon Richard Fenton Outcault, the cartoonist who was famous for the exceedingly popular Hogan’s Alley comic strip. Outcault was a smart self-marketer. At the fair, he rented a booth to sell licensing rights to his latest characters, Buster Brown and his dog, Tige. To attract attention to the booth, he hired a little person and the fellow’s dog to dress as Buster Brown and Tige.

Bush realized that connecting the Buster Brown character and the

Brown Shoe Company could be a hit. Bush paid Outcault $200 for licensing rights to use the Buster Brown name and image on children’s shoes. Buster Brown had a sweetheart named Mary Jane, so the Brown Shoe Company also bought licensing rights for “Mary Jane” for their line of girls’ strap shoes

Buster became a multimedia star starting in the twenties, in a series of popular two-reel short subjects starring child actor Arthur Trimble as Buster Brown, with "Pal," a trained pit bull owned by Harry Lucenay, appearing in many of the films as Tige.

These films, many of them directed by Gus Meins, were intended as competition to Hal Roach's "Our Gang," a series which Meins himself would direct in 1933-34. Pal, of course, moved over to the Roach lot for a better contract and a featured role in the Our Gang series as "Pete."

Both Meins and Trimble came to sad ends. Meins was accused of molesting a group of teenage boys in 1940, and rather than face the charges in court, drove up into the hills behind his home and killed himself. Eight years later, Arthur Trimble -- now a troubled 32-year-old man -- shot and killed his wife and then himself.

Pete, meanwhile, was murdered by poison by someone on the Roach lot in 1930, leaving one of his puppies to take over the dog role in the Gang films. Nobody's ever written about a "Buster Brown Curse," but maybe they should.

 

[Fading Fast]

I think those are modern. I've seen others and it's joking about cats making bad decisions, usually involving alcohol.

View attachment 125711
These aren't vintage, they're by Ravi Zupa and Arna Miller, & are available for purchase.

Thank you gentlemen. They definitely captured a vintage vibe. I'm surprised there's still much of a market left for matches.

 

[2jakes]

Thank you gentlemen. They definitely captured a vintage vibe. I'm surprised there's still much of a market left for matches.

Vintage item that is available.

Reproduction Red Crown valve caps for my '40s
truck and bicycle.

 

[Fading Fast]

Buster became a multimedia star starting in the twenties, in a series of popular two-reel short subjects starring child actor Arthur Trimble as Buster Brown, with "Pal," a trained pit bull owned by Harry Lucenay, appearing in many of the films as Tige.

These films, many of them directed by Gus Meins, were intended as competition to Hal Roach's "Our Gang," a series which Meins himself would direct in 1933-34. Pal, of course, moved over to the Roach lot for a better contract and a featured role in the Our Gang series as "Pete."

Both Meins and Trimble came to sad ends. Meins was accused of molesting a group of teenage boys in 1940, and rather than face the charges in court, drove up into the hills behind his home and killed himself. Eight years later, Arthur Trimble -- now a troubled 32-year-old man -- shot and killed his wife and then himself.

Pete, meanwhile, was murdered by poison by someone on the Roach lot in 1930, leaving one of his puppies to take over the dog role in the Gang films. Nobody's ever written about a "Buster Brown Curse," but maybe they should.

Holy Cow, that is a lot of murder, suicide and other not nice things coming out of a small related group. In the late '90s, as cable TV was starting to do more original programing, a show on the E channel, "E! Mysteries and Scandals," would devote each episode to a past famous or infamous scandal, mystery, etc. - things like the Blue Dahlia or Fatty Arbuckle. It was cheesy and sensationalized, but very Fedora-Lounge-era focussed. This Buster Brown story would have been perfect for it.

 

[2jakes]

Holy Cow, that is a lot of murder, suicide and other not nice things coming out of a small related group. In the late '90s, as cable TV was starting to do more original programing, a show on the E channel, "E! Mysteries and Scandals," devoted an episode to past famous or infamous scandals, mysteries, etc. - things like the Blue Dahlia or Fatty Arbuckle. It was cheesy and sensationalized, but very Fedora-Lounge-era focussed. This Buster Brown story would have been perfect for it.

A favorite was the "Roswell UFO" mystery.
Somewhere I have VHS tapings of the documentaries and the movie.

I also love the time period:1947, New Mexico.
One of the documentaries has the rancher who first sighted
the "material" driving a 1946 GM pickup which was the
spark that started my search for one of those trucks.

The "Black Dahlia" was also around this time
period.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Holy Cow, that is a lot of murder, suicide and other not nice things coming out of a small related group. In the late '90s, as cable TV was starting to do more original programing, a show on the E channel, "E! Mysteries and Scandals," would devote each episode to a past famous or infamous scandals, mysteries, etc. - things like the Blue Dahlia or Fatty Arbuckle. It was cheesy and sensationalized, but very Fedora-Lounge-era focussed. This Buster Brown story would have been perfect for it.

What's interesting to me is that there's been plenty of speculation over the years about an "Our Gang" curse, but very little mention of this Buster Brown connection, especially given how signficant Gus Meins was at the Roach studios. In addition to running the Gang for two seasons -- a period in which both Scotty Beckett and Alfalfa Switzer came to prominence, two more young actors who grew to brief and tragic adulthoods -- Meins also headed up the Thelma Todd-Patsy Kelly unit, a series which ended with Todd's mysterious death in 1935.

You could get a whole conspiracy series out of all these odd coincidences, and even if you don't believe in curses, it seems like there's got to be a story somewhere there that hasn't really been told.

 

[Fading Fast]

Of course he's not forgotten. And while you might not like their motives, you have to give the Boys from Marketing their due - they've anthropomorphized a Tiger into a handsome, approachable and friendly looking athlete. I don't know why, but I want the gas he's advertising in my car's tank:

 

[LizzieMaine]

For many years, one of the fiberglass Esso tigers stood watch on the roof of our local high school in honor of its sports teams, "The Fighting Tigers." When the teams became the Mariners several years ago, the tiger was removed from his roost,and laid out in state in a coffin in the high school lobby. His funeral was a three-handkerchief affair.

 

[Inkstainedwretch]

When Esso had the slogan "Put a tiger in your tank," There was a novelty fad for fake tiger tails to hang from your slightly ajar gas pipe cover.

 

[3fingers]

^^ Not directly related, but this reminded me of the Union 76 antenna balls. There was another promotion that involved getting a banana on your antenna when you bought gas but I can't think of what oil company ran that one.

 

[2jakes]

When Esso had the slogan "Put a tiger in your tank," There was a novelty fad for fake tiger tails to hang from your slightly ajar gas pipe cover.

I have one that's been in the house for
years.
Don't remember where or when I got
it or why.
I didn't know it was an Esso product until
you mentioned it and I went to Google
to check it out.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Gulf had a similar promotion going on around the same time, with stick-on plastic horseshoes you were supposed to glue to your bumper, advertising No-Nox gasoline as the "gas with the extra kick." Several of the neighborhood kids stuck them to their bikes, but being a Texaco household, we never would be caught dead with such a tacky novelty.

 

[LizzieMaine]

To go back to the Era proper, meet the Tydol Engineer, a license plate topper doodad given out free to remind you that there was "an engineer in every quart" of Veedol motor oil.

The Engineer was part of a popular advertising campaign featuring cartoons by Otto Soglow, creator of the Little King, and ran in eastern newspapers thruout the mid-thirties. I don't think they actually boiled down any real engineers and rendered their oils into Veedol, but with the petroleum industry you can never be too sure.