My feature last week on advertisements from the past seems to be a hit with many readers. I got a good number of e-mails and requests for more. Apparently, ads do trigger recall even more than a half century later, a testimony to the efficacy of print advertising. This week, we look at ads from the more recent past (at least to baby boomers like me).
Most of the ads featured this time are from the colorful Sunday Times Magazine. Yes, I collect them, too, and have dozens from the Fifties, Sixties and Seventies. The STM was a part of my life growing up. Sundays were never complete without the stories and photo essays a la Life magazine. I did read some of Carmen Guerrero Nakpil’s columns but only appreciated them much later. Then there were the ads, of course.
The difference between the ads I featured last week and those that graced Philippine magazines in the ‘60s was the advent of color printing. Advertisers found that color sells. Most of the magazine’s contents were in black and white, but the ads were in vibrant color and printed on fairly good paper, even by today’s standards.
There were many ads in the ‘60s for things that have since disappeared from today’s shelves or from general use. This was because of changes in technologies or improved versions of the products themselves.
One such product was noodle soup. Royco was the brand of choice then for not-so-instant noodles. You had to really take the trouble to prepare a bowl of Royco soup. They were tasty — maybe because MSG was not so controlled then or because they really had better, less chemical-tasting ingredients. Of course, the practice in those days was to add fresh ingredients to the mix to make it more substantial.
A major advertiser of coffee in the ‘50s and ‘60s was Cafe Puro, a homegrown brand. It made strong, full-bodied kape, the type that was used by jeepney drivers and the jars themselves were recycled as coffee cups. I remember seeing trays full of these brown beverages being hawked to dozens of Gorios in their colorful jeepneys on the streets of Kalentong on my way to school. (For those of you who don’t know Gorio and his Jeepney, it was a famous cartoon in the ‘60s.)
Café Puro had a hit advertising campaign featuring glass containers that featured Philippine dances. The Bayanihan and Filipinescas dance troupes’ triumphs from their tours of Europe and the Americas were in the spotlight then. Many a dining table sported the tumblers, which today are a collectible of Philippine modern ephemera.
For those needing something more than just a caffeine boost, there was no Red Bull yet — people turned to Yomeishu Tonic, a Japanese concoction guaranteed to restore vitality and cure almost any ache and pain modern urban men and post-natal women had.
In those days of restricted importation, the Philippines had a growing industrial capacity that saw Filipino firms start to manufacture everything we needed. Radios and phonograph players were made here. Some of the components were imported, but the bodies and circuitry and everything else, short of the transistors themselves, were made here.
As for medicine, we had everything we needed way before the generics law was passed. Actually, it was all the lobbying by foreign lobbies that forced world financial institutions to then force the Philippines to abandon its march towards self-sufficiency in manufacturing and industry. We’ve been economically stunted ever since.
Stunted but entertained … that is how we have been all these years. In the ‘60s, entertainment also advertised. Our example is from 1968 — Dahil sa Isang Bulaklak was a Famas-awarded film, one of the first Filipino films shot in full color. It was produced by Nepumeceno Productions, directed by Cirio Santiago, and starred Charito Solis and Ric Rodrigo. It was billed as the “biggest Filipino motion picture ever!” The movie has not been seen since, but the theme song is still around.
Still around are ads in magazines. What have disappeared are a lot of the Philippine-made products that paid those ads in the ‘50s and ‘60s.
I lament the reality that today’s ads make so clear — that we make less and less of what we consume. In this time of world recession, one has to ponder an alternative where we develop self-sufficiency, build our country’s economy, tame our population growth and, yes, produce our own products and advertise using completely-Filipino advertising companies using Filipino talents, directors, production and postproduction facilities.
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Feedback is welcome. Please e-mail the writer at paulo.alcazaren@gmail.com.