Judge For Yourself

 Sunday Surprise Day.

For today I have a series of tabacco ads for the Reynolds' Prince Albert brand. Ol' Judge Robbins was a long running series, with the earliest samples in the mid to late thirties. In the early forties they did a run of ads called The Wonders of America, which I always loved. The artist here is different from the earlier ones, possibly the same artist who did the Camels ads. I have added one new one from the late forties, with a new artist and a new approach.

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April Rules

Sunday Meskin Mess

For years I have been reserving the Sundays for Mort Meskin, but lately I seem to have run out of scans to share. I do have a load of Prize books with his work - a rarely seen period - but I have to scan those in first and would prefer to do whole books (and sell them) to doing just the Meskin stories. Unfortunately I have other scan projects going (inlcuding a book I am working on). So I am not done with Meskin, but please be patient.

For now I have a selection of Prince Albert Ads, some of which I have shown before. At that point on eof my regulars added the information that the first few (in fact all that were done before 1940) were by Abby and Slatts artist Raeburn, who was indeed one of the early heroes of comic strip advertising. I never found out who did the Wonders of America series, but if you look at the new October 1942 ad Ihave added, it is amazing how a different artist than Mort Meskin could wind up in the same stilistic area. Meskin himself was still learning his craft at that time, but to me the similarities are remarkable.

Light Up

Wednesday Advertising Day.

In May this year I showed some ads from a 1941 series for Prince Albert pipe tobacco called Wonders of America. Last week I went to Newspaper Archive to find more of them. The seemed to have run once a month, rather than the customary once every two weeks for this type of ad. If the numbering on the later samples is right, they started in December 1940 but I couldn't find that one. There was a whole Santa Claus page for Prince Albert that month, so I don't know. Maybe the January 1941 one is the first.

Anyway, before that, they had Judge Robbins, some of which I have show earlier, and when it ended they changed to some nature theme. I did not find all of them, but it is a nice enough sample.

You Be The Judge

Wednesday Advertising Day.

The best comic strip ads were often done for cigarettes.