Sealtest Ads Featuring Famous Cartoonists – 1947 and 1957

A few days ago I mentioned how the once mighty A&P chain of grocery stores went kaput.  Well, here’s another national brand that advertised a lot in the Lorain Journal back in the 1940s and 50s, but has similarly disappeared: Sealtest. 

Sealtest lives on as a brand of milk in Canada, but here in the Lower 48, it’s nowhere to be found. At one time, it was a popular brand of ice cream, running frequent ads in the Lorain paper.

The ad campaigns were pretty creative too. One featured the work of cartoonist George Lichty, who was well known for his Grin and Bear It comic feature. His loose, sketchy style of artwork is instantly recognizable.

Here’s one ad from the Lichty campaign, which ran in the Lorain Journal on January 15, 1947 – 70 years ago this month.

Toasted hazelnut sounds like a pretty exotic ice cream flavor to me, more like something from the 2000s than the 1940s.

And here’s another one from about a week later. It ran in the Journal on January 23rd. The motorist kind of reminds me of Broderick Crawford.

If you take a squint at the fine print at the bottom of the ads, you’ll see that Sealtest sponsored a radio show on WTAM called Sealtest Village Store, starring Jack Haley (also known as the Tin Man on the Wizard of Oz).

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Ten years later, Sealtest used another well-known cartoonist – Charles Schulz – for one of its ad campaigns, this time for its chocolate drink. (They couldn’t call it chocolate milk?)

Here’s an ad that ran in the Lorain Journal on July 11, 1957. It has a nice piece of custom artwork, unlike the stuff that is cobbled together now since Schulz’s passing. Strangely enough, the ever-present “Schulz” signature is missing.

There’s no doubt that the arguing ballplayers are Peanuts regulars Linus and Shermy, but who is the chubby, indifferent umpire? Did he get fat slurping Sealtest's ersatz chocolate drink?