Advertising illustration by Andrew Loomis for an Oh Henry! bar


This billboard, from the 1920s, which is for Oh Henry! candy bars, has an illustration by Andrew Loomis, who was a notable illustrator at the time. I'd never heard of him, but he must have been pretty important in order to be allowed to sign his drawing on an ad. Most illustrators are anonymous.

By the way, just to get it out of the way, it seems like either Loomis had never seen an actual Oh Henry candy bar, or he exaggerated the size. Anyway, let's look at the illustration:


Although I don't really know, my best guess is that this was done with tempera, possibly egg tempera, which Andrew Wyeth used. Of course Andrew Wyeth was never considered an illustrator, he was a fine artist. Most illustrators don't sign their work. This must have really meant a lot to the Oh Henry company, that they got Loomis to do the artwork.

Speaking for myself, although I've done thousands of illustrations (my style is cartoon illustrations) I never signed them, and I can count on one hand the number of clients who asked me to. My illustrations weren't created because anyone had an interest in my artwork, it was there to serve a purpose, to catch the eye.

I like this illustration a lot. I'd like to believe that if I lived back in those days I would have worn an outfit like that while out golfing (including the bow tie!), and I definitely would have shared my Oh Henry bar with a girl as pretty as that.


Sadly, this type of illustration went away in the 1960s to be replaced with photography, and I understand. Photos seem to be more honest, and I'm still worried about whether people expected an Oh Henry bar to be that size!


Dang, now I'm hungry for an Oh Henry bar!

Images from the Duke University Library Digital Collections.
If you like pictures of old-time Phoenix, please become a member of History Adventuring on Patreon. I share a LOT of cool old photos there, copyright-free, with no advertising. Your support makes it happen! Thank you!

Click here to become a Patron!

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Why cars in the future won't need stop signs, red lights, or stripes on the road

Image
Time-travel with me into the future. Where we're going, we'll still need roads, but our cars won't need the kind of stuff that human drivers need, like stop signs, or stuff painted on the road. And if you're already panicking that computers will take over, don't worry, they already have. The fact that you're reading this right now combines so much amazing computing power that it would have been unthinkable to anyone in the 1960s, or '70s, when I was a kid. Speaking of being in the geriatric age group, if you're like me or older, you took a lot of pride in knowing the rules of the road, such as what to do at a stop sign if four cars approach at the same time, the difference between a "yield" sign and a "merge" sign, or maybe how to parallel park. But calm down there old-timer, that type of knowledge will just be as quaint as how to use a horse and buggy is nowadays. Sorry! The best way to picture how traffic will flow in the future is
Read more

Watching a neighborhood grow and change in Phoenix, Arizona

Image
I stopped to take a closer look yesterday at where the old Circle K had been in my neighborhood, which is a suburb of Phoenix. And it's got me to thinking about how much Phoenix grows and changes over the years, and how people feel about it. This particular neighborhood was built in the mid 1980s, when there had been only a smattering of houses and a community college (Glendale Community College, built in 1965). There are some houses that I can tell are from the 1970s, and a few even older, but what happened here is that the neighborhood suddenly appeared in 1985 or thereabouts. There are three shopping centers on the corner of 67th Avenue and Peoria - the one in the photo is called "Peoria Station", and it was designed to kinda look like a train station. The other three are called Westporte Village, Brittany Square, and Crossroads Plaza. I've lived in this neighborhood for a very long time, and no one ever uses those names, even though the signs are still up. But the
Read more

Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?

Image
As someone who has been interested in history since I was a little kid, I've always asked the most childish questions, and quite often never got an answer. As a kid, I was told to run along and play, and don't bother the grownups, so I set my questions aside to work on when I myself became a grownup. But some questions I really haven't found a satisfactory answer for, and get thrown away as I find myself learning the more important stuff. I now understand the grownups, but the kid in me still has childish questions like "Why did Adolf Hitler always have such a bad haircut?" The first question to ask is whether a particular style (whether hair, clothing, etc.) was in style at the time. The moustache was, and you can Google a photo of Charlie Chaplin, who wore the same style of moustache at the time, and quite stylishly. The wide lapels were in style in the 1930s, as was were the tall shirt collars and small ties. But the haircut wasn't - it's just awful. Me
Read more