Vintage Back to School Ads

This week the kids in my county are going back to school. This boggles my mind as I can remember when I attended school, we did not go back to school until the Wednesday before Labour Day. Even then, that first Wednesday back was only half a day. I never particularly liked school, so memories of going back to school do not invoke a good deal of nostalgia in me. While I am not nostalgic about the yearly return to school as a kid, I do have some nostalgia for the back-to-school ads that would start coming out in July and August. By today's standards, some of them would be rather bizarre. Here then are some vintage ads (most of which are from well before I started attending school).

Today smoking is considered objectionable even for adults, let alone college students. This was not the case in 1941, when Old Gold could target college students in their ads and no one would even bat an eye.

I grew up on a farm, so I never rode my bike to school, although a lot of my friends who lived in town did. This AMF Roadmaster ad from 1953 then makes a lot of sense.

An ad from First National Bank in 1969, encouraging parents to pay for their kids' school supplies using MasterCharge. MasterCharge would change its name to MasterCard ten years later, in 1979.

From 1970, an ad for the Jeep Wagoneer. While SUVs seem to be the family vehicle of choice now, in 1970 most people would prefer a sedan or station wagon. This Jeep ad obviously sought to change that.

An ad from 1986, for Dayton Hudson and the May Company. Both companies owned department stores, which were dying out in the Eighties but were once commonly found in the United States. Anyway, to me this ad definitely screams, "Eighties."