Funny vintage Australian ads you would never see today

IT’S Uncle Toby’s, but not as you know it. From oats that “make you pretty” to “asbestos socks” claimed to cure rheumatism, these Aussie newspaper ads from yesteryear are both ludicrous and hilarious.

ADVERTISEMENTS ain’t what they used to be — and let’s be grateful for that.

Herald Sun readers have sent in dozens of ridiculous ads from last century that would be laughed off the drawing board today.

Believe it or not, “asbestos socks”, advertised in The Weekly Times in 1923, promised to cure everything from tired, aching feet to corns, bunions and rheumatism.

REVISITING VICTORIA’S VINTAGE TRAVEL POSTERS

MORE FUNNY VINTAGE AUSTRALIAN ADVERTISEMENTS

Asbestos socks ad from The Weekly Times, 1923.

That gem is just one of many hilarious ads Ann from Stanhope found among 120 pages neatly folded and squashed into an old Robur Tea tin she bought at a country auction 20 years ago.

Another from The Weekly Times in 1916 spruiked a scientific home treatment to make any “thin, scraggy, emaciated person” plump and healthy, by “filling out all hollow and scraggy parts of the body where flesh is wanted”.

A 1916 advertisement for home treatment to make skinny people plump.

Ads for Kotex pads in 1927 promised their pads would curb “women’s handicap”.

Kotex pads were advertised in 1927 by promising “Women’s Handicap is greatly curbed” with the new design, which was used by “8 in 10 better class women”.

A similar Kotex ad promised: “Women’s danger of offending under the oldest hygienic handicap is ended this way”.

Ads for Odorono in 1930 warned that sweat odours turned men against women.

An ad for “Odorono” in Australian Home Journal in 1930 promised the product would keep underarms dry and fresh — fair enough.

But then a businesswoman was quoted as saying: “Perspiration odor turns men in an office against women quicker than anything else.”

Kotex ads promised the pads would end “women’s danger of offending”

Old Uncle Toby's bag promised eating oats would “make you pretty".

Meanwhile, a 4lb Uncle Toby’s oats bag from early last century, photographed in a museum by Susan Callus, of Laceby, promised that eating the product would “make you pretty”.

Ads headlined “Radium is Life” in Adelaide papers in the 1920s promised radium would cure cancer, diabetes and rheumatism, while “arsenical toilet soap” would produce a lovely complexion, according to ads in The Weekly Times in 1897.

Radium would cure cancer, diabetes and rheumatism according to this 1920s ad.

1897 advertisement for arsenical toilet soap and complexion wafers.

1934 ad for “Peerless Vibrators”.

And then there were the “Peerless Vibrators”, advertised alongside vacuum cleaners and clothes irons in an ad for Foy’s Fair in Sydney’s The Sun in 1934, and sold with all “the usual attachments suitable for facial or body massage”. Their purpose? Umm, apparently the vibrators were guaranteed “to relieve chronic headache”.

— Check out In Black & White in the Herald Sun newspaper Monday to Friday to see our favourite funny photos sent in by readers.

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