Sweets and chocolates have been around forever! This post takes a look at vintage and retro advertisements of some of our favorite treats, past and present. These advertisements range from the very early 20th century (1900's) all the way up to the mid-80's with the newest advertisement showcased here being from 1984. We will be looking at some of the trends and styles used; many of which are still being used today.

Barratt Sherbert Fountain

Barratt Sherbert Fountains are possibly the only company in this showcase who really went outside the box with their advertising ideas, ultimately making them quite wacky and cool!

1979

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1984

Notice the shadows used on the "10 Super BMX Bikes To Be Won" type in the following advertisement; this is a trend that is used endlessly in the modern day, so much so that you can even get typefaces with the shadow already applied so there is no need to create it yourself! A couple of (free) typefaces that do this are SF Slapstick Comic Shaded and Dancing Donuts, although there are plenty of others out there!

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1984

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Space Dust Bonbons

The Space Dust Bonbons advertisement posters are surprisingly incredibly similar considering they were designed ten years apart; one in 1970 and the other in 1980. The layout of both posters is virtually identical with the only real noticeable different (at first sight) being the color scheme.

1970

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1980

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Wrigley's Chewing Gum

Wrigley's Chewing Gum has been with us for over 100 years now, and it is still readily available in most shops that sell gum. Throughout the time they have been around they have ran many advertising campaigns aimed at all kinds of different people, as you can see below!

1900

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1913

This poster in particular is one we most probably wouldn't see these days; a young boy shouting at his mother for a penny so he can buy a packet of gum. There are of course benefits of such in-your-face advertisements - they're fun, get the viewers attention and ultimately stick in your head.

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1918

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1929

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1930

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1930

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1976

Over the years Wrigley's turned to using fashion to advertise their products, as can be seen in the poster below. Using advertising techniques such as this can help to attract customers who you otherwise may have not been appealed to your products. A modern example of this is advertising soft drink brands such as Coca-Cola and Pepsi and targeting them at soccer fans.

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Rowntree's Fruit Gums

Rowntree's main technique used to help advertise their Fruit Gums is purely color. Their products are bright and colorful and therefore using bright colors such as yellow and green go perfectly well with the product being advertised, not to mention how eye-catching they are... You'd spot one of their bright yellow posters from miles away!

Other than colors helping draw attention to the advertisements, they also have a lot of meaning. Yellow for example is a positive color. You can read more about colors and their moods/meanings in the following article: Inspiration: Fantastic Logos Across The Color Spectrum.

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1952

This magazine full-page advertisement uses a border all the way round the advertisement image - a style that is now seen regularly in the twenty-first century in not just magazines but in advertisements of all kinds - even gigantic movie posters on bus stops and billboards!

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1952

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1953

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1955

Here is another example of an advertisement promoting a product to a certain group of people with particular interests. In this case, the advertisement is advertised at families as a great 'treat' to have lying around whilst enjoying the television.

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Rowntree's Chocolate

1923

This Rowntree's Chocolate poster pays a lot of attention to the detail in the chocolates themselves rather than the rest of the poster, making the box of choc's the focal point. The colors (particularly the yellow top) and the stripes on the mans top really help to draw the eyes into the main focal area.

Although the following article is about web design, you can pick up some great tips about how to control the flow of your work, so it's well worth checking out!: How To Control Flow Within Your Web Designs.

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Late 1920s

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Hershey's Chocolate

Hershey's advertisements for their chocolate products (in my personal opinion) are some of the best here. I'd be surprised if you hadn't noticed the increase of retro and vintage design trends being digitally produced in the recent months and possibly years; if you look closely at the following Hershey's posters you'll notice that a lot of trends used in modern day graphic design were often used "back in the day".

1900

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1924

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1930

A colorful and very powerful advertisement poster for Hershey's "Mr. Goodbar", a chocolate bar full of peanuts. The simple typography, minimal colors and simple shape (the circle) make this poster not only pleasing to look at, but also very effective in what it's meant to do.

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1930

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1934

This poster uses a white stroke/border and uses similar typographic techniques to those we regularly use in the twenty-first century. One thing to think about in this poster is the child handling a sharp knife cutting the cake - would that be allowed to be seen on an advertisement poster these days when we have such strict advertising standards and rules?

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1934

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Nestle Chocolate

The majority of these Nestle chocolate ads and very minimalistic, mostly consisting of a white background, the products name, a picture of the product and another picture. It was like this for all of Nestle's products other than their drinking chocolate, which can be seen below the other Nestle ads.

It was minimal advertisements like these from the 1960's that inspired the use of minimalism in modern day posters and advertisements. The following article showcases fifty creative ads: 50 Most Creative Minimalist Print Ads.

1960's

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1960's

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1960's

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1960's

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Cadbury's Chocolate

Cadbury's is probably one of the first chocolate brands you'll think of when it comes to advertising, mainly due to some of their excellent TV commercials in recent years, most of which have won awards of some type: two of these commercials that come to mind are the Gorilla commercial and Eyebrow commercial.

Their posters however, even those that date back to the 1950's, are just as impressive! Their modern advertisements still use the exact same logo, both the minimal "Cadbury's" type-based logo, and their alternative logo with the two glasses of milk/cream - this suggests their advertisements have always worked wonders and therefore have never had to rebrand the company.

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1953

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1953

This poster uses detailed images of their chocolates and place them accurately throughout the post to form a line of interest, drawing your eyes into the center of the advertisement and therefore keeping you interested for a longer period of time, ultimately helping the viewer to remember the ad and therefore product.

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1955

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1957

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Fox's Glacier Mints

The Fox's Glacier Mints advertisement posters are very similar and both extremely minimal, yet were both successful advertisement campaigns only six years apart from each other. The minimalism in these posters works very well considering the product it is advertising; a clear mint. The lack of color works very well purely because the product itself is also color-less.

1952

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1958

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Maltesers

Maltesers have taken a very unique approach to their advertising campaigns over the years. Instead of using standard international or US paper sizes for their ad shapes, they've gone with very thin and long ads. This could of course cause problems as to where the ads can be placed, but this is definitely overcome by how unique and effective they are. These advertisements were both actually used in printed publications such as newspapers and magazines, hint the lack of color.

1953

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1954

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Spangles

Spangles, like Rowntree's Fruit Gums, use colorful 'fruity' colors in their advertising to match their products colors. As their sweets are fruit-flavored, fruit is also quite often present in their posters. This not only brightens the whole advertisement up but also informs the reader the sweets are fruit-flavored without actually reading any of the print.

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1952

Spangles also released peppermint sweets - in the poster below you'll notice how the same bright colors used in their Spangles fruit ads aren't used; instead a soft minty blue has been used to represent mint.

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1953

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1955

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Conclusion

As you can see from the examples showcase in this post, there have been a lot of trends used throughout the years - but are they really all that different? The design world tends to go through 'phrases', revisiting certain styles and techniques every X amount of years, this is also the case with other industries such as fashion and photography!

Vintage/Retro Poster Tutorials

If you're looking to improve your skills when it comes to reproducing vintage/retro posters, here are some great tutorials you should read: