28 November 2013

Day #12 - Less Than Awesome Advertising

There are many hidden areas in any museum. At our museum much of these areas are used as storage for the many programs that operate throughout the year in the public view.

Being that we are usually planning and presenting programs in overlapping time periods, its not surprising that things often get put away in a jumbled fashion.

Recently, a coworker was given the task of condensing one of the areas that had belonged to someone who no longer works at the museum. While she was a lovely person and a great resource, she was also a bit of a hoarder. So there are many aisles of things that don't actually need to be kept.

Among the materials from workshops that she'd run back in the late 90's, Ryan found the gems pictured below. Match books that were hallmarks of the tobacco advertising of the time... but the fact that the matches within were used by children is what surprised us. They were probably free and that's probably why they were used within the workshop, but still. Kind of odd to expose kids to these messages. I'm glad that advertising has changed its angle a bit with regards to smoking and anything connected to it... because, really, we've got to do better.

I really should have gotten a shot of the pictures that accompanied the messages on the front of each matchbook.

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