Vintage Advertisements

This advertisement appeared in the Waterford News & Star on January 12th, 1951, offering hope to anyone unfortunate enough to be suffering from that small but remarkably determined enemy of the foot — the corn.

The product was called Exine, and it was made by Bell’s of Waterford. According to the advertisement, corns could be removed by using this product, which was available either as a liquid or in silk form.

Anyone who has ever had a corn will know, of course, that they are not nearly as harmless as the word suggests. For something so small, they can produce an astonishing amount of discomfort, particularly when lodged in a place that seems to come into contact with every shoe you own.

I have always believed that prevention is better than cure, especially where toes are concerned. To keep mine in perfect condition, I buy shoes approximately two sizes too large and make sure they are wide fitting. This leaves enough room for four pairs of thick socks, which provide a generous layer of protection around the toe area.

There is probably a danger that, dressed in this fashion, my feet could be mistaken for a pair of small punts, but it’s a price worth paying. The system has served me well over the years. I may resemble Bigfoot walking around, but at least I’m pain-free.

This advertisement from the Munster Express of April 11th, 1958, offered what must have sounded like welcome relief to the hard-working women of rural Ireland. According to the ad, aching fingers and rheumatic pains need no longer stand between a busy farmer’s wife and her milking stool. The answer, it seems, was simple: a daily dose of KRUSCHEN.

The beauty of the advertisement is that its promise was not confined to farmer’s wives alone. As it helpfully makes clear, the remedy was suitable for “anyone who keeps cows”. So, whether you were married to a farmer or merely found yourself in charge of a modest herd, KRUSCHEN was apparently the thing to have in the cupboard. And it was affordable too. A large bottle could be bought for two shillings and sixpence, while those with lighter milking duties might manage quite well with the one shilling and eightpence size.

It was presented as nothing short of a miracle cure: easing stiff fingers, keeping rheumatism at bay, and restoring women to the business of milking with renewed vigour. If that were not enough, the advert suggests it kept the cows happy as well. Cows were said to moo better when you used KRUSCHEN.

In the Waterford of the 1950s, sherry was regarded as something a little more refined than the usual drink served across a public-house counter. A small glass might be offered before a meal, served to visitors at Christmas, or produced on an occasion when the household wished to show a certain degree of hospitality. It wasn’t a drink to be hurried. Sherry came with a sense of ceremony, even if that ceremony amounted to no more than taking a bottle from the sideboard and pouring a modest measure into one of the good glasses.

The colourful advertisement shown here appeared in the Munster Express in 1950 and promoted Amontillado sherry. It presented a Spain of bullfighters, flamenco dancers, musicians, sunshine and excitement. There was no attempt at understatement. The reader was promised “sunny splendour”, “daring matadors” and “exciting women”, all supposedly contained in a bottle of Spanish sherry.

The advertisement tried to make people believe that, by going into Egan’s Bar and ordering a glass of this sherry, they could enjoy the complete Spanish experience. Once the glass was placed on the counter, the grey Waterford sky might disappear, the rain on Barronstrand Street might be forgotten, and the customer could imagine being beneath the Spanish sun, surrounded by dancers, guitarists and charging bulls.

Whether anyone in Egan’s ever felt quite so transported isn’t recorded anywhere as far as I can find, but I’d imagine they enjoyed the foreign drink. If they could get people to buy into such an idea today, it would help with global warming by cutting down on travel, while boosting the local economy at the same time. Sherry needs to be promoted again.

This old advertisement for Taylor Keith orange dates from 1966, when soft drinks came in proper glass bottles and even the empties had a value. The return price was 2d, which may not sound like much now, but in 1966 it was a small fortune.

I spent a fair bit of my childhood searching around the village for empty bottles. A bottle found in a ditch, at the side of the road, or left near a wall wasn’t rubbish to me. It was potential cash. I would gather them up and bring them back to Mrs. Morrissey’s shop, hoping they’d be accepted. Sometimes she would examine them and decide they had not been sold from her premises, and that was that. No pay-out. But more often than not, I would get enough back to buy a packet of crisps and an ice-cream, which made the whole exercise worthwhile.

Oddly enough, that old habit never really left me. Since the empties return scheme became a money-making venture again, I rarely leave the house without a plastic bag in my pocket, just in case I spot an empty can or plastic bottle. They are not as easy to find as you might think. Half the town seems to be collecting them now, and anything with a return value disappears quickly.

What you do see, however, are glass beer bottles. They are everywhere, yet they have no return value. That seems backwards to me. Glass bottles are the ones that can do real damage, especially when broken in places where older men walk in sandals or where children play.

You would think glass would have the highest price on its head. Bring it back, get paid, and keep it off the streets and public places. Simple.

But many of the sensible ideas from years ago seem to have been forgotten in this modern era of enlightenment. It was managed in 1966 in small village shops, surely a similar return scheme for glass could be set up in 2026.

Back in 1952, people were advised to drink this 69% proof gin to keep themselves fit.

Not “have a small gin if you’ve had a hard day.” Not “have a small one to take the edge off.” This was gin as a health plan. A tonic for the worker. A bottle of productivity, appetite and internal tuning.

Apparently, if you weren’t quite up to the mark at work, this stuff would sort you out. Your system would hum, your appetite would sharpen, and your output would rise. You’d stride into work glowing with purpose, smelling faintly of juniper and full of confidence.

By the time I started drinking, something had clearly gone badly wrong in the drinks industry.

I found gin, or drink of any sort, did very little for productivity, unless the job involved leaning on a bar counter and explaining why everything had been better in the past. As for keeping the system tuned, mine was usually very much out of tune by closing time. Appetite did improve, to be fair, but only for chips and anything that could be eaten on the way home from the pub.

It makes you wonder what sort of constitution people had in the early 50s. They must have been made of stronger stuff than I was. A man could apparently drink a bottle of medicinal gin, improve his work performance and still be home in time for tea, without losing his coat, his money or the thread of his own sentence.

Those people really knew what the good life was.

This advertisement from 1950 made a bold promise: Syrup of Figs could solve just about any eating issue a child might have.

Mothers were gently warned not to force-feed a child who was pale, wan, and refusing meals. Instead, the answer was apparently much simpler: a spoonful of syrup. According to the advert, this would restore the child’s appetite, give them a big red glowing face, and soon have them “eating like a horse.”

That last claim does raise a few questions. If a child wouldn’t eat their dinner, it seems unlikely they’d suddenly develop an enthusiasm for hay. Still, perhaps after a dose of Syrup of Figs, anything was possible.

This advertisement from 1947 carried a warning that many children would have understood only too well: Santa was watching. Not just on Christmas Eve, and not just from the North Pole, but from the roof, the chimney, the bedroom window, and probably from behind the curtains if the truth was known. He was not merely a seasonal visitor; he was an ever-present inspector of behaviour, manners, and, in this case, teeth.

According to Macleans, one sure way to remain on the right side of Santa’s notebook was to brush your teeth until they were “as white as snow.” A neglected toothbrush could easily lead to a black mark beside your name, and no child wanted to risk that with Christmas in the balance. Santa was every parent’s little helper in those days, called upon whenever children needed a gentle warning to behave themselves.

Of course, with Santa keeping children’s teeth shining brightly all year round, the dentists in Ireland may not have been entirely pleased with him. He must have made it hard for them to earn a living. Perhaps that is why, to make amends, he often left sticks of rock, toffees, gob stoppers and other tooth-testing delights in Christmas stockings. After all, Santa required dental treatment from time to time himself, and I suppose he didn’t want to be on their naughty list, I guess even Santa is fearful of dentists.

A Cure For Lassitude and Depression

This old advertisement from 1947 is a good example of the sort of claim that was often made in print back in those days. Buckfast Tonic Wine was presented as the answer to all manner of human decline: lassitude, depression, exhaustion, and that general feeling of being “run down.” In other words, if life had you worn out, the solution was apparently not rest, fresh air, or a good dinner, but a glass of wine made by the monks.

I remember trying Buckfast myself, though not for any great medicinal purpose, I can’t say I was suffering from lassitude at the time. Whatever it’s supposed powers, it wasn’t really to my taste. It may have done wonders for the exhausted and downtrodden, but it failed to convert me.

There was also the small matter of the warning: “Bald patches may appear on the top of your head.” That did not appeal to me either. A tonic that promised vigour at one end but threatened the hair on your head seemed a risky bargain. Perhaps you had to be locked in a monastery twenty-four hours a day to fully appreciate it. The monks may have known something the rest of us missed, but I was happy enough not to find out.

To be honest, I think I preferred a glass of Andrews Liver Salts. At least with Andrews, there was a bit of fizz and a feeling that something useful was happening. Still, the advertisement had a charm of its own. It belongs to a time when tonics, salts, cordials, and cure-alls each promised to put a person back on their feet. Some were taken for health, some for habit, and some, no doubt, for reasons only monks understood.

As for me, the monastic life was never really on the cards. If a man had to drink Buckfast to enter into it, I was better off staying outside the abbey gates. 

This advertisement from 1967 was doing its best to convince people that renting a television was not a luxury at all, but practically a public service. After all, how could any respectable household be expected to carry on without The Riordans, Tolka Row or Buntus Cainte coming into the sitting room? Other great attractions of the time included The Late Late Show, Quicksilver, Seven Days, Wanderly Wagon, Daithi Lacha, Feach, Newsbeat and RTE News. Riveting stuff, every bit of it, and certainly enough to make a person consider paying weekly for the privilege.

Of course, the television experience in those days was not always as smooth as the advertisement suggested. Our own set often had snow on the screen, even in the middle of summer, and there were times when the people on RTE appeared to have two heads. My father assured me this was perfectly normal, so I accepted it as part of broadcasting. You did not question these things. If the picture rolled, jumped, faded or turned everyone into ghostly twins, it was usually fixed with a sharp slap to the side of the set, or by sending someone across the room to adjust the aerial.

Nowadays, if someone had an eighty-inch screen with one dead pixel, there would be a crisis in the house and a new television ordered before the kettle boiled. Back in the sixties, we were made of sterner stuff. We watched through snow, shadows, crackles and double vision, and still considered ourselves lucky. After all, once The Riordans came on and you could tell Benjy from Batty and Mary from Minnie, the rest was only a minor technical detail.

This is an advertisement that appeared in the Munster Express on 3 June 1949, advertising one of my favourite drinks when I was a child. I thought of it as being like a “Summer Drink”, which came in sachets of orange powder that fizzed up when water was added. However, while “Summer Drinks” quenched your thirst, Andrews had bonus benefits.

Andrews Liver Salts was first introduced in 1894 by Scott and Turner, and was sold as an effervescent powder for indigestion, overindulgence and general stomach complaints. It was a polite Victorian way of saying: "you ate too much, drank too much, and now your insides are writing a letter of complaint."

The powder, just like the ‘Summer Drink’, was mixed with water, where it fizzed up in a very satisfying way. Its main active ingredients were sodium hydrogen carbonate, citric acid and magnesium sulphate. The sodium bicarbonate helped neutralise stomach acid, the citric acid helped create the fizz, and the magnesium sulphate gave it its laxative effect. In other words, it tackled the problem from both ends of the digestive committee.

Despite the name, it was not really a liver medicine in the modern sense. “Liver salts” was an old-fashioned term often used for health salts or laxative preparations. I guess “Andrews Digestive Fizz That May Shortly Require You to Stay near Home” probably would not have looked as good on the tin.

Its advertising was very much of its time. Phrases like “inner cleanliness” were common in older adverts, and they managed to make taking a laxative sound like a moral improvement. One could almost imagine a 1950s housewife stepping brightly into the day after a glass of Andrews, with sparkling eyes, a clean tongue, a toned liver, and absolutely no plans to leave the house for the next half hour.

It became a familiar product across Ireland and Britain for generations. The blue-and-white tin was instantly recognisable, and for many families it was the standard answer to indigestion and the common complaint known simply as “feeling a bit off.” The cure was always the same: a spoonful in water, a dramatic fizz, a brave swallow, and then a short period of waiting to see which department of the body would respond first.

More recently, Andrews Liver Salts has become harder to find. Irish medicines information lists Andrews Liver Salts Effervescent Powder as discontinued, and reports in 2024 noted that packs were being sold online for high prices after supplies dried up.

So Andrews Liver Salts belongs to that great line of old remedies that were half medicine and half ritual. The fizz alone probably made people feel better before it ever reached the stomach. It promised freshness, sparkle, inner cleanliness and domestic harmony — all from a tin that looked innocent enough but had the power to rearrange your morning. 

Back in the 1940s there seemed to be a miracle cure for nearly everything, and half of them have since vanished as completely as if they had never existed at all. Sloan’s Liniment was one of those names that once would have been known in houses far and wide, spoken of with the sort of confidence people used to have in bottles, jars, and tins with strong smells and stronger promises. It was the kind of remedy that suggested relief the moment the cap came off, though whether that was down to its medical powers or the sheer force of the fumes is another matter.

I don’t know where you would buy a bottle of Sloan’s Liniment these days. I’ve certainly never seen it in Lidl, wedged between the air fryers and the chainsaws. But I remember that my father, Ernie, always had a bottle of it somewhere close at hand for emergency pain. If there was a sore back, a stiff shoulder, or some mysterious ailment that appeared after lifting, stooping, or sleeping awkwardly, out would come the Sloan’s. I seem to remember it had a toxic smell, a bit like turpentine, that could stink out the house for days, my mother never liked it at all. She probably felt that whatever pain a person had would be replaced by a different suffering once the smell got into the curtains.

Still, that was the way of many old household remedies. They were not delicate, pleasant, or attractively packaged in the modern sense. They announced themselves. You knew when Sloan’s Liniment had been applied, and very likely the neighbours knew as well. Yet people trusted those bottles, perhaps because they had been around for years, perhaps because everyone’s father or grandfather swore by them, or perhaps because in those days there was great faith in anything that burned a bit and smelled as if it could strip paint off a gate.

Looking back on it now, Sloan’s Liniment belongs to a vanished world of homely cures and medicinal confidence, when every house seemed to have some bottle or tin put by for emergencies. Whether it always worked as well as people claimed is open to debate, but it certainly left an impression, if only on the nose. 

Back in 1943, farmers had little patience for anything that interfered with the harvest, and crows and pigeons were high on the list of offenders. They could strip a field in no time, pecking at newly sown grain or helping themselves to ripening crops as if the whole place had been laid on for their convenience. So when a product like Caw appeared, promising to protect crops from these feathered raiders, there was no great hand-wringing about it. The birds were told, in the plainest possible terms, where to go.

It also has to be remembered that 1943 was wartime, and food production mattered more than ever. Farmers were under pressure to make every acre count, and losses to pests, weather, or wandering birds were taken seriously. In that sort of climate, old advertisements like this one reflected a very practical attitude. The aim was simple: save the crop, protect the yield, and send the crows and pigeons to that great flyway in the sky.

According to the advertisement, Caw was the answer. It was spread through the fields in the hope of keeping the birds at bay, and it was presented as the most effective remedy available. Every other supposed option, as they might well have said at the time, was strictly for the birds.

This advertisement, which appeared in the Munster Express in 1944, gives a fine glimpse into the way people were encouraged to think about money in those days. The message was simple enough: a child’s future had to be planned for, and the best way to do that was to start saving early. Not by spending freely or enjoying a few treats, but by putting away every spare penny in the Post Office Savings Bank. It was thrift presented almost as a moral duty.

There was very little room in the world of 1940s Ireland for extravagance. A few pence spent on sweets, comics, or any of the small pleasures that might brighten a child’s day could easily have been frowned upon as money wasted. Better by far, according to the thinking of the time, that it should be tucked safely away for the years ahead. The advertisement makes that point in its own gentle but firm way, reminding parents that their daughter might one day need money for whatever path life had in store.

It is a great piece of social history because it captures a very different attitude to childhood and family life. Modern advertising tends to encourage spending, but this one preached restraint, prudence, and preparation. The Post Office was presented not just as a place for stamps and parcels, but as the guardian of children’s future, one small deposit at a time

In 1955 there was no such thing as working from home. Men got on their bikes first thing in the morning and cycled five or ten miles to work. For their lunch they might have had a cut of turnover bread and a cup of Irel coffee. The usual shift lasted twelve hours, and then they would cycle home again. Their wives would be waiting with the tin opener in their hands, and a clean tin dish would be on the table. The man of the house would be hungry after his long day, and nothing satisfied his hunger like a tin of John West salmon. Once finished, they would listen to the wireless for half an hour and then go to bed. Such was the lot of the working man back in the good old days of the 1950s.

In 1940, the secret to happiness lay in a humble bar of soap. There was no need for the “wine o’clock” after-dinner drinks to bring a smile to a woman’s face back then. Women were happy if they had soap suds in the sink to shift the nasty grease from the dinner plates. Soap gave families the freedom to enjoy quality time outside, happy in the knowledge that their homes were sparkling, thanks to the power of Sunlight Soap. Life looked almost heavenly back then, even though it was wartime.

There was a time in Ireland when a cup of Irel coffee was as common as the kettle on the hob, and just as essential. Long before the arrival of cappuccinos and lattes, this was the everyday drink in kitchens across the country, especially on farms where the day began early and rarely slowed down. It came in a tin, was scooped out by the spoonful, and brewed strong enough to put a bit of life back into you, or so people said.

Irel wasn’t coffee in the modern sense at all, but a roasted chicory blend, dark, earthy, and full of a flavour that people either grew fond of or simply got used to. It was cheap, reliable, and always there when it was needed. Men heading out to the fields would take it in a flask or drink it quickly from a tin mug before setting off, while for the women at home it kept the day moving along, from the first bit of housework to the last plate washed after the evening meal.

There was no great ceremony to it, no talk of notes or aromas, just a hot drink that did its job. It warmed you, filled you, and carried you on to the next task. And while some might say it had a taste that leaned more towards diesel than pleasant, but it was affordable, warming, and hit the spot. In its day, that was recommendation enough.

Today, with shelves full of choices and coffee made every which way, Irel belongs to another time. But for many, the memory of it lingers, tied up with the smell of a fire, the sound of cups on a table, and the quiet, steady pace of life as it once was.