Downtown Lorain Christmas Ad - December 17, 1958

Do you have all your Christmas shopping done? Christmas is only a few days away.

If this was 1958, and you were looking for ideas, this ad for the Downtown Lorain stores was for you. It ran in the Lorain Journal on December 17, 1958.

The ad's A-Z theme is kind of neat, with each letter representing either a gift idea or a store name. The challenge of coming up with a gift suggestion using the letter X, however, apparently was too difficult and it was conveniently left off. This also resulted in a nice, clean layout grid of five rows of five letters.

That's one offbeat looking cartoon Santa in the ad. But that was the style back in the late 1950s, with this style of simple, nebbish-like characters often appearing in TV commercials.

Anyway, did you take a squint at the fine print of the ad block for the letter P?

Yup, the "Christmas Favorites 45 RPM Records" that Kresge's was advertising included "Boofo Goes Where Santa Goes." It's interesting that the record came out at the same time as the beloved "The Chipmunk Song" (also known as "Christmas Don't Be Late) featuring Simon, Theodore and Alvin.

But back to Boofo.

The Boofo Facebook page includes a link to a 2015 WKYC interview with Joseph King, the man who wrote the tune. Apparently the record was a huge hit, selling 30,000 copies in ten days! Forty years later, King added to the Boofo mystique with the book illustrated by Dick Dugan.