Sunday, August 07, 2016

Ah, the racially sensitive Victorian Era....

A Pears' Soap ad from the May, 1883 issue of the children's magazine, Wide Awake, which I scanned from my copy. Yikes.  What can I say?  (Besides "Yikes," I mean.)

Pears' Soap is still around, but it gets really bad customer reviews on Amazon.  Anyway, it's a buck a bar at Dollar Tree, which is a better deal than any of the eBay (!) offers I'm looking at.

Or you can always get it from your nearest leading druggist.


And here are two different versions of the same ad.


Lee

2 comments:

Bill from Illinois said...

Thanks, Lee -- ugly stuff to be sure, but pretty revealing of that era. I'm going to save this image for future teaching. My U.S. history students should find it, um, interesting…

Ron said...

A different time, but O for God's sake!!!

Ron