1950's Lorain Dairy Queen Ads

I've remarked in this blog a few times how my family never went to Dairy Queen or any of the soft serve ice cream type places while I was growing up in the 1960's. For my parents, ice cream had to be real ice cream – frozen ice milk need not apply.

I was never really crazy about Dennis the Menace either, so the mischievous moppet's appearances in Dairy Queen advertising did nothing to make me want to patronize the place.

But my wife, who grew up with Dairy Queen, still likes to go there to get one of their signature creations. So Dairy Queen is in rotation along with our other soft serve ice cream choices, such as Avon Dairy Isle and Terry's Dairy. (For real ice cream, though, it's gotta be Toft's in Sandusky!)

Here's a couple of newspaper ads from the 1950's that show the present Terry's Dairy's original identity, as Lorain's Dairy Queen.

The ad at left is from April 16, 1958. It's a real attention-getter with a nice, clean easy-to-read layout and great illustration.

The next ad (below) is more of a curiosity. It's still branded with the Lorain Dairy Queen's 903 East Erie Avenue address, but the ad really isn't directed to the ice-cream loving public. It's more of a corporate ad touting DQ's success and promoting the concept of free enterprise.

If this ad doesn't make you want your own DQ franchise, nothing will!

It's an interesting ad, copy-wise. It even boldly describes the Dairy Queen product not as ice cream but as... er... "dairy-food" that comes out of a spigot. (It reminds me of the similarly-named Kraft "cheese food".)

The ad goes on to say how healthy DQ is for you, since it's loaded with milk.

We had Dairy Queen on Friday night (we went to the newly renovated Amherst one). Somehow I don't think my Chocolate Xtreme Blizzard – full of brownies, cocoa fudge, and chocolate bits (not to mention 660 calories!) – was all that healthy!

But it sure was good! (Small wonder that I've ordered the same thing the last four times we've gone to Dairy Queen!)