Back to School Ads – 1966

Although school has been in session for many school systems for several weeks now, many of my readers remember fondly when school did not start until the first week of September. It made for a nice, clean transition from August to September.

And with school starting later back then, the back-to-school ads didn't begin to appear until the end of August. Many (if not most) of them seemed to focus on school clothes, specifically shoes. 

We never wore our 'gym shoes' to school when we were little – it would have been unthinkable. (Remember bringing them to school in a gym bag along with a towel and gym shorts?) Nope, we wore shoes that had to be polished and tied. I don't remember a lot of slip-ons.

Anyway, here's a not-too-ample sample of ads from 1966 with a back to school theme. This first ad for Gray Drug Stores has a neat transistor radio giveaway.

Aug. 31, 1966

Amazingly, some of those radios have survived. You can see one on the radio museum website. Here are a few poached pictures courtesy of that website.

Hills usually had some great clip art in their ads, but the illustration in this one is a little odd. I'm not sure what you would call the young boy's hairdo. Maybe he was a Cesar Romero fan.

Sept. 1, 1966

And as I mentioned, there were tons of shoe ads. I like the little dog illustration in the Hageman Shoes ad.

Sept. 2, 1966

I've never heard of Lazy Bones Shoes, but apparently they were popular enough to run four color ads in magazines well into the 1970s. And the cute dog mascot was featured prominently, which is doggone nice.

1977 ad

1978 ad

Other shoe ads featured the old Brady favorites: Nobil's and Pic-Way.

Sept. 1, 1966

Sept. 1, 1966