If you haven’t looked at the site plan59, you should. It stocks galleries of advertising art from the 30s, 40s, 50s, and 60s, most of it very bright and colorful. Looking at it is very refreshing, like doing situps in the office. Only better, because you don’t have to worry about whether the floor is clean. Some representative selections below.
1960 Pontiac Bonneville Sports Coupe
Street scenes like this one above are favorites.
Republic Steel 1936
Notice the deep horizon here.
1957 Mercury Colony Park
And of course life among the upper crust. Love those foxhounds!
1941 Fargo Express Pickup Body
This guy looks like he’d rather be in a Socialist Realist painting than selling trucks for The Man. He’s mad about something, that’s for sure.
1960 Dodge P300
The truck isn’t the first thing I look at in this picture, or even among the first ten things. Is that guy really delivering milk, or is he an undercover man of some sort?
Yakima Chief Evaporated Apples, circa 1940
Political incorrectness is not far to find.
There’s a blog on the site.
The Brewers Foundation 1949
They documents efforts like this to introduce Americans to the idea of drinking beer while watching TV. Advertising industry, you have succeeded!
Dunbar Furniture, 1958
After the USSR launched its Sputnik satellite in 1957, many people formed the idea that mankind’s future lay in outer space. Here, we see the appropriate sofa to sit in while on the surface of the Moon. Presumably the beer and TV set are still in the lunar module.
Good eating
One of their most popular galleries is titled “demonic tots.” This little boy from 1952 is a prime example.
acilius
believer1
lefalcon
losthunderlads
vthunderlad
Panther Red 
cymast
/ October 17, 2008I marvel at how coiffed, cinched, and heeled females in this time period always look.
The undercover man is who the man mad about the man is mad. What delivery driver wears a dingy suit to work and sunglasses on a cloudy day? Isn’t he a bit off his route? Who buys that much butter? And about what time of day is it in the pic?
What is politically inncorrect about Yakima Chief?
Those 1958 spacesuits look a lot more comfortable than the modern ones. To better facilitate TV viewing, I assume. The beer goes in the canisters. They thought of everything back then!
Nice pics! Except for that evil-looking one at the end.
believer1
/ October 18, 2008Leave the poor delivery man alone. He is enjoying his job and his suit is snazzy.
cymast
/ October 18, 2008If by “snazzy” you mean “an obvious cloak of corruption” then I agree.
believer1
/ October 19, 2008LOL I mean good looking.
acilius
/ October 19, 2008To me he looks like a 50s movie star, the kind who would never play a milkman but who might play a spy who disguises himself as a milkman. Like Cary Grant in a Hitchcock movie.