Hart’s Jewelry Ad – Jan. 24, 1947

Yesterday’s post about Muir's featured the store’s longtime Scottish mascot.

Well, in today’s post, Hart’s Jewelry muscles in on Muir’s racket with their own leggy Scottish lassie. The ad ran in the Lorain Journal on January 24, 1947 – 71 years ago this month.

Image from a 1956 Harry Volk
Clip Book of Line Art

It’s kind of amusing how “Scottish thrift” was used over and over again as an easy marketing theme through the decades. At right is an image from a Harry Volk Clip Book of Line Art that has been at my desk at work since the mid-1980s. That particular image is from a 1956 collection entitled MONEY.

The association with Scots and saving money seemed to reach its climax with the Sandy’s hamburger chain’s founding in the mid-1950s with its "Thrift 'N Swift" tagline and Scottish lassie mascot.

I guess the whole concept was finally deemed politically incorrect and insulting (or perhaps just lame and unimaginative) because I haven’t seen it in any recent advertisements for a long time.

The last instance I can remember in recent years is the Great Scot grocery store chain in western Ohio, which utilized a tartan pattern in its signage. Until as late as the 1990s there was an outlet in Port Clinton.

The chain is still around, although I think it is now co-branded with Community Markets.