Thursday, June 16, 2022

Hills Dept. Store Father's Day Ad – June 1962

We'll linger another day here on the blog at Hills Dept. Store out on Route 57, savoring the smell of the freshly popped popcorn by the exit.

Like yesterday, it's June 1962 – sixty years ago – and today's ad is a timely one, promoting Fathers Day savings. It ran in the Journal back on June 15, 1962.

The Father's Day gifts shown in the ad are the standard issue: shirts, ties, socks, belts, key chains, etc.

The ad is definitely of its time, with the father in the ad resembling the typical TV situation comedy dad of that era. (Strangely, he's not smoking a pipe.)
Even as a kid growing up in the 1960s, I knew there was something a little unrealistic about the way families were portrayed on the TV shows we watched, such as Leave it to Beaver or My Three Sons. My dad worked in a plant as a machinist, and only wore a tie to church, or if he and Mom were going out to eat with their friends, which wasn't that often. So I don't remember ever giving him a tie for Father's Day.
Somehow I don't think ties are a big gift item in 2022 either.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Even if families were unrealistic on tv back then,I would rather have Barbara Billingsley as June Cleaver as my mother than one of todays fake moms.What about Sophia Vergara on Modern Family.She is the epitome of fake TV moms.June Cleaver would give Gloria Pritchett a masterclass in motherhood.Not putting any fake moms down but the fifties-sixties were a good time for fake tv moms.

-Alan D Hopewell said...

My favorite 1960's tv parents are Gomez and Morticia. I don't remember buying anyone ties, ever.
Happy Father's Day to all the Fathers out there, blood and chosen.