Flipping through old magazines from the late 1800s through the mid-20th century is a strange experience. Tucked between the articles are advertisements that would never make it to print today. Many of them feature children — smiling, cheerful, and completely unaware that what they’re holding or consuming was harmful. These ads reveal how differently society once viewed child safety, health, and marketing ethics.
One of the most jarring categories is drug advertising aimed at families with young children. In the 1880s, cocaine was a common ingredient in over-the-counter products. Lloyd Manufacturing Co. sold cocaine toothache drops openly, marketing them with cheerful child imagery. The drops were advertised as “instantaneous” in their relief and perfectly safe for kids.
Cathartic pills, tonics, and sedatives were all sold with children front and center in their advertising campaigns. Grove’s Tonic from the 1890s promised to build up children’s health, while The Distillers Company promoted Distaval sedatives in 1960 with imagery designed to reassure parents. Distaval contained thalidomide, a drug later linked to severe birth defects.
Tobacco advertising leaned heavily on child imagery throughout the early and mid-20th century. Cigar box labels like “Young Fritz” showed children associated with tobacco products without a second thought. Camel’s 1946 campaign and Philip Morris ads from the early 1950s both used family-friendly visuals to normalize smoking, often featuring doctors or wholesome domestic scenes alongside cigarette branding.
DuPont’s 1954 cellophane advertisement is among the most visually unsettling of the era. It featured an infant wrapped tightly in clear plastic film, meant to convey the product’s freshness and cleanliness. The image of a baby encased in cellophane strikes modern viewers as a serious safety hazard — a concern that simply wasn’t part of the conversation at the time.
General Foods promoted Sanka decaf coffee in 1951 by suggesting it was a suitable drink for children, using a young child in the ad to make the case. GE’s 1941 sun lamp ad featured children being exposed to artificial UV light, marketed as a health benefit rather than a hazard. These ads reflect a period when neither UV radiation nor caffeine consumption in children raised any advertising red flags.
Firearms advertising directed at children was shockingly common. Iver Johnson’s 1913 revolver ad showed a young child alone with a handgun, with copy reassuring parents that their revolvers were safe enough for kids to handle. Mattel’s 1967 M16 Marauder toy ad took a different but equally striking angle, modeling a children’s toy directly after a military assault rifle used in the Vietnam War.
Lloyd Manufacturing Co.’s 1885 cocaine toothache drops ad remains one of the most cited examples of historical advertising gone wrong. Sold freely at pharmacies, the drops were positioned as a fast, effective remedy for children’s dental pain. At the time, cocaine’s addictive and toxic properties were not publicly acknowledged, and the product was sold without restriction.
Love’s Cosmetics ran a Baby Soft lotion campaign in 1974 that sexualized a young girl to sell adult fragrance products. The ad’s tagline played on the phrase “baby soft” in a way that modern audiences immediately recognize as deeply inappropriate. It stands as one of the most criticized print ads of the 1970s.
Philip Morris ran multiple campaigns in the 1950s that placed children in proximity to cigarette branding. Their 1951 Marlboro campaign and 1956 Philip Morris ad both used family imagery to associate their products with domesticity and trust. Rainier Beer’s 1905 ad and Gillette’s safety razor campaign from the same year similarly used child figures to create a sense of wholesome familiarity around adult products.
The Distillers Company’s 1960 Distaval ad is particularly chilling in retrospect. It showed a small child reaching into a medicine cabinet to retrieve the sedative, with copy reassuring parents about the drug’s safety. Within two years, thalidomide — the active ingredient — was pulled from markets worldwide after causing limb deformities in thousands of newborns whose mothers had taken it during pregnancy.
