Well, this just was not fair. There are so many really wonderful vintage Halloween postcards out there that I had to choose only a few. I’m a sucker for anything with pie-faced kids, animals and funky lettering. Have a happy one.

Saw a homemade cigarette squished on the ground yesterday. When do you ever see that nowadays? Hopefully not much. Anyway, I found a can of tobacco that actually had a re-usable tin. I like the visual of the smoke in the “Velvet” logo. So smooooth. Lo and behold, this stuff is still available today although the tin is not as nice as it used to be.

If you look really closely, I believe you’ll see that the lettering is hand done. Amazing.

I’m completely obsessed with this olde thyme-y printing method. Nobody I know can tell me what it was called. There were so many colors — not just the usual Process CMYK. On the flip side, there’s much to look at, too. The stamp is so formal and similar to the design of our money. The post office used to deliver TWICE a day. Notice that this caught the evening mail. And no zip codes. Those were the days… What will happen 100 years from now? Perhaps archeologists will be prowling through dusty boxes of cds and computer innards instead of looking at these little gems.

I bought this gum at a brand new retro candy store near Loon Mountain in NH. The design is so quiet, simple and descriptive: Beeman’s gum was originally made by Dr. Beeman, Clove gum is (guess what?) clove flavored, and Black Jack tastes like licorice.

The makers of this gum yanked production in 1978. Now they put it out every few years and when it’s gone, it’s gone — unlike the scuzzy feeling it leaves on my teeth.

I was going to post a variety of Cheerio boxes through the ages but why bother? If I saw this box (right) on the store shelves today, I wouldn’t blink an eye. This brand is pretty solid because it’s barely been touched since the 1940′s when the packaging took on this look. The very first packaging (left) looks like a box of dish washer detergent. Interesting that they had to scream “READY TO EAT!” The target audience was used to cooking oat cereal for breakfast. See more examples of the same yellow box throughout the years here.

Went to a networking function tonight in a pub which got me thinking about old liquor advertising. Here’s a platter to serve your Prohibition-era Bevo beverages on. It was a “cereal beverage” bottled by Budweiser in the 1920′s. The logo is lackluster, considering how ornate Budweiser logos usually are and I don’t think those are even Clydesdales in the picture. No big surprise that Bevo went bust in 1929.

Had a discussion with someone last night about traveling on different airlines and it inspired me to find some lovely vintage airline art. Here’s an interesting example I found at a travel design site. Translation is: “1,000 New Pilots – Training for the National Gathering” circa 1938.

While beautifully rendered in the Constructivist style, it violates a basic design rule. Don’t point something going down when the public really doesn’t want to envision it going down… literally.

This little note, chock-a-block with every type face and embellishment known to the 19th century designer is actually postage currency. It wasn’t really legal tender (in 1862) but was sold by the post office to banks and to the public so it could be exchanged for stamps. Wait a minute — isn’t that what MONEY was for? Fritter more of your time away reading about the history of American money here.

I went to the store today to get groceries and almost didn’t grab the Bon Ami because I didn’t know the packaging had changed. Great design — but with quiet color choices, it doesn’t exactly leap off the shelf at the shopper. I had to look it up to see what inspired such a radical change. Then I found out that it’s not so radical at all. In fact, the similarities to the 1920′s packaging are pretty startling. Nice homage to the original look of the packaging. Now I love it even more.