Ads from yesteryear

I  collect old magazines. Not the ones you see on the shelves of bookstores and convenience stores everywhere, despite the fact that I edit a magazine myself — BluPrint — for those who don’t know. I collect old magazines printed in the Philippines or about the Philippines between 50 and over a hundred years old.

I started to collect these magazines because I found them a source for examples of wonderful Philippine architecture, landscape, and urbanism that have since disappeared or fallen into disrepair. A lot of the pictures are peripherally about these elements, but in a situation where little of our built and natural environment has been documented, magazines are a rich resource that reminds us that we once knew how to build buildings and treasure open green space.

The old magazines I search out are also a mirror of how people lived in our young, expanding cities and old towns reeling from the initial effects of modernity. The glimpses of quotidian existence in the first half of the 20th century are seen most colorfully in the advertisements that actually paid for the publication and distribution of these compilations of illustrated articles, poems, and ephemeral history.

Just picking up one of my many issues of Philippine Magazine yields an interesting array of advertisements for beverages, cameras, alcohol, cigarettes, medicine, beauty, and consumer products. Except for cigarettes, these items still make the bulk of advertising. There are differences, of course, which provide contrast and context for how our lives have changed in the last hundred years.

Philippine Magazine was edited by A.V. Hartendorp, an American writer, and one of the key characters on the prewar Manila cultural scene. The magazine was the chronicler of news, literature and the arts for a country gearing up for independence. It lasted from 1929 to 1941.

The March 1937 issue featured, as many did, a Norman Rockwell type of colored illustration. The subject, as with Rockwell’s, was a scene from daily life. It showed two shoeshine boys sharing a soda — “50-50.” The artist was Gavino Reyes Congson, who reportedly passed away in 2006 at age 97. Someone should do a retrospective on this wonderful storyteller.

Today, we find few shoeshine boys on the sidewalks. They have been replaced by Mr. Quickie in the malls, but mostly it is the fact that people don’t shine their shoes much anymore. Also, we have few sidewalks and many fear to stop for anything today except to avoid cars and buses that usurp pedestrians’ precious little space, making of them parking lots and driveways of transport terminals.

One of the first advertisements inside was for something that has survived to this day. Crayolas were touted as “The ideal medium for craftwork.” They were described as “colored wax crayons.” The advert made me want to get a box the next day. I miss coloring outside the lines, the distinctive smell, and the wax that got into my fingernails.

The majority of the ads were in black and white and few had photographs so they had to rely on illustrations. Typical was an ad for the Caron perfume Bain de Champagne.

One ad that had to have a photograph was that of Kodak’s. The target market was mothers who wanted to record the growth and antics of their children. The camera featured looked surprisingly portable enough, despite the fact that it needed a bellows to extend the focal length of the lens. I wish I had one.

The ads also tell us of the changes in popular summer destinations. Until the ’60s, Antipolo was a choice pilgrimage site that almost everyone went to. It ranked up there with Baguio and Sibul Springs (another destination long forgotten). The trip was advertised by the Manila Railroad Company with the line “Safe, fast, reliable, and economical travel is half the success of your Antipolo trip.”

Yes, we had trains all the way to Taytay! In fact, we had trains all over — to the north past Dagupan, to the south, to Bicol, in Manila as mass rapid transit, in Cavite, in Corregidor, in Negros, and in Cebu! Where are they now? They are buried beneath half a century of neglect, corruption, and the rise of insidious dark forces from the twin demons of cars (we don’t make) and endless, shoddily made highways.

Highways and cars led to another new invention — the suburbs. Philippine Magazine featured new real estate developments like San Juan Heights. Five thousand-square-meter lots made sprawling bungalows possible and made for the ideal escape from the crowded city. San Juan was the ’burbs then and was a distant, 15-minute drive from the Rizal Monument. Today, millions commute over two hours one way just to get to work.

Next is an ad fellow columnist Butch Dalisay would find interesting. It was for the Parker Vacumatic. Fountain pens were the writing instrument of choice back then. Bic and ballpoint pens had to wait till after the war to make an appearance. The cost for a Parker fountain pen started at a pricey P10.

For much less, one can have a naturally refreshing drink of Royal Tru-Orange. This was 60 years before another fellow columnist, RJ Ledesma, used his boyish charm to promote the brightly colored drink.

Finally, we have an ad for a strange beauty product. Tattoo South Sea Colour for lips seems like lipstick but apparently was an ointment or coloring agent but not “pasty” or sticky. For P1, you could make your lips as luscious as Angelina Jolie’s in The Changeling.

The ads are great entertainment for me. Of course the news and great literature filled most of the pages of Philippine Magazine and are a better read than most history books. The ads are a history of sorts, too, and show the emergence of a consumer society. They document our continuing love affair with goods, gadgets, and glamour. Today, people buy magazines because of the addiction that makes shopaholics of us all. The brightly colored and seductive ads are designed to capture our attention and eventually our disposable — as well as indisposable — savings.

So if you have any old magazines — I mean, really old — send them to me. I’ll pay the face value of those magazines, which for Philippine Magazine was 20 centavos!

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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.