Virtues and Values
Trade card imagery is rife with laudatory nods toward what might be called old-fashioned virtues. This tactic aimed to stir feelings of warmth and nostalgia, encouraging consumers to identify with the products or services being offered. Sentimentality is found in abundance, as are the comforts of home and family, especially the importance of (generally well-behaved) children. Religious faith and patriotism are also common themes. Although the images and sentiments promoting these virtues are often unrelated to what is being sold, they seek to establish and solidify favorable associations.
Children and Pets
Well-dressed and perfectly behaved children playing peaceably at the beach may seem difficult to imagine, but the image is just right for a luxury product—deviled crabs sold by Boston’s S.S. Pierce Co.
Niagara Starch is “pure and sweet,” as is this lovely child. Her bare shoulders may be slightly provocative, but her eyes are cast upward toward higher things. The card is dated 1887.
Glenwood’s kitchen ranges are sturdy, as is this young fellow. Unlike the Niagara Girl, he keeps his lips firmly closed, his eyes looking straight ahead into a future of strength and accomplishment.
Purity and quality again—this time applied to baking powder. A little girl cuddles her cat, signifying love and total attachment. She, her pet, and the carton of the product she stands on are inseparable.
A furry pooch happily laps up a glass of Hires’ Rootbeer, bringing a toddler to the verge of tears. It’s a sweet, harmless domestic tragedy. How could this beverage be other than wholesome and appealing?
Children playing in fresh, clean snow evoke a spice brand’s purity and quality, and those words appear in the ad copy, just in case the customer misses the point.
Family Life
”My Jewels,” showing a loving young mother and her daughters, inspires warm feelings. True, the little ones may be threatened “by the taint of scrofula,” but blood-purifying sarsaparilla, it is promised, will protect them.
Childhood and old age are the theme of this Ayer’s Sarsaparilla trade card. Mrs. Eliza Fleming of Lowell, Mass., it is reported on the reverse, “has been cured of fainting spells and dizziness, and her daughter of neuralgia and weakness.”
The Wide-Cut Eureka Mower, this card suggests, stands for family values. Those who use the machine will share time together, relaxing after their labor in blissful family harmony. They have chosen wisely, and they are rewarded.
This card for a nutritional meat extract is from Germany, but the Liebig company, which operated worldwide, clearly understood that images of family and faith had universal appeal.
This sentimental scene featuring children being taught morning prayers provides the setting for a sympathetic discussion about Dr. D. Jayne’s Carminative Balsam, which “has been the recognized Standard Remedy for all Affections of the Bowels.” And being “pleasant to the taste, it is easily administered to children.”
“Words of Comfort” is the theme of this card, the fifteenth in a series of inspiring paintings offered by Dr. Jayne to promote his line of remedies, including Dr. Jayne’s Tonic Vermifuge (for worms).
American Pride
Preston & Merrill’s Infallible Yeast Powder is “Bound to Rise,” and so is America, here represented by an exuberant Uncle Sam raising his arms triumphantly. Interestingly, the text on the reverse of this card is in Chinese.
America, in her revolutionary cap but wearing her hair down and showing a bit more than the usual amount of leg, is pouring herself a glass of her own native champagne.
This proud soldier boy, “superior to all,” is indeed a boy, perhaps in an attempt to soften the memory of a brutal Civil War ended barely twenty years earlier. His service to his nation is being used to sell starch.
Patriotic images—a flag and a liberty bell—stir national pride to sell conserves. The product comes in a (presumably uncracked) bell-shaped jar. It is unclear what role the devils and sprites play in all this.
Columbus may be credited with “discovering” America, but it appears the advertising folks had been there first, trumpeting Ayers Sarsaparilla, which, this card claims, offers “alterative, diuretic, tonic and curative properties.”