Getting Reddy for the New Year

Well, it's a New Year – and it’s been about a year since our old pal Reddy Kilowatt dropped in for a visit on the blog. He’s been its unofficial mascot since the beginning, and has shown up around the holidays the last few years.

So here he is, magically making a giggling Baby New Year 1947 appear – 70 years ago.

It was easy to find the illustration above, which appeared in the Lorain Journal on December 31, 1946. Like I’ve said before, it seems like Reddy was in the Journal every day in the 1940s, 50s and 60s – almost as often as those ubiquitous liquor ads.

And to prove Reddy’s longevity, here he is – twenty years later – in an ad (below) that appeared in the Journal on January 2, 1967 (a mere 50 years ago today.) He looks a little different; during the ensuing twenty years since the other ad, his aging antennas seem to have, er, shrunk.

The redesign was probably a marketing decision made by some low-watt executive who thought he looked too devilish.

Anyway, we’re going to be stuck in 1967 for a few more days on the blog, as I’ll be looking back at some other ads and events from that time period.