Laundry Detergent Ads – January 1953

Are you loyal to one brand of laundry detergent – perhaps the one that your mother always used?

Mom used Cheer (in the blue box) over the years, but I usually buy all®. It claims to be a good choice if you have sensitive skin, so that's enough to sucker me in. But I've bought other brands too that were on sale.

Seventy years ago in the 1950s, there was a lot of competition for the loyalty of housewives when it came to laundry detergent. Below is an ad for Tide that ran in the Lorain Journal on January 15, 1953.

It's an attractive layout, with the ecstatic housewife neatly dividing the ad page into copy sections with her extended arms and legs. I also like the Tide package design, which reminds me of the concentric circles seen at the beginning of a Looney Tune.

As we all know, Tide is still going strong today, with the current packaging still hearkening back to the original box.

Since Mom never bought Tide, the first time I ever really thought about the brand was when it was lampooned as a Wacky Package (below). And I still associate Tide with the slogan, "Your Clothes Will Be Fit To Be Tied."

Another detergent advertising in the Journal back then was Surf. It was a new product at the time of the ad below, which ran in the paper on January 29, 1953. 

It's another attractive ad layout. What's interesting is that Surf was hoping to 'clean up' by borrowing the brand equity of another product, Lux soap.

It's funny how many of the names of these laundry detergents are 'tied' in with bodies of fresh water (which many of these products probably helped to pollute).

Anyway, Surf and Lux are still around today. 

But don't plan on scrubbing up with a bar of Lux anytime soon, since (according to its Wiki page) it's mainly marketed in Brazil, India, Thailand and South Africa.