Coffee is something that many of us – especially those of us that are older – look forward to as soon as we wake up. We need it to get going in the morning. I actually get a headache when I don't drink it.
And a good cup of coffee at work is – sad to say – very often the high point of my day.
It's funny, but most of the young people that I work with don't even drink coffee; they favor energy drinks. And when they do drink coffee, black coffee is out of the question; they prefer iced coffee, with flavored syrup – yecch. Just the thing to warm you up on a cold winter day.
Anyway, seventy years ago, coffee was very often the subject of national ads found in the Lorain Journal.
Here's one for a coffee that I never knew existed: Borden's Instant Coffee. The ad ran in the Journal back on January 29, 1953.
I guess Elsie just wasn't satisfied producing the stuff that you add to coffee; she wanted a bigger piece of the action.
Here's a 1946 magazine ad for the product.
I don't buy into the premise that the guy in the ad usually made bad coffee before he discovered Borden's. In the Brady household, it was generally accepted that the male of the species made better coffee (stronger at least).
Here's another vintage ad. I'm not sure if the old gent is smiling because of the coffee's taste, or the way it's being served by his, er, maid (?) or whoever.
And here's a jar that somehow survived all these years.
I'm not a big fan of instant coffee. I tried it a few times out of sheer laziness (anything to get me out the door quicker in the morning), but I always came back to the regular kind.
Speaking of regular coffee, and getting out the door quickly, here's a vintage ad for the preferred coffee of my parents: Hills Brothers. It ran in the Journal on January 22, 1953.
The ad is somewhat amusing. The woman is crestfallen because her husband took it on the lam rather than 'take a second cup' of her obviously bad brew. But was he supposed to take a cup and saucer on the bus?
At least Hills Bros. provides a happy ending to the proceedings, although the man seems to be more interested in his coffee than his pretty, adoring wife.
