Yeah… I wonder if it might’ve said on the back of the bottle? I don’t see it on the front or the ad.

The reason I wonder about the back is, this was 1920’s, and in the USA, the legal requirement to disclose the ingredients of medicines was passed in 1906 under Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy was all about pure food and drugs.

Normally I think of the 1800’s or early 19-aughts as the era when ingredients were a total mystery.

Around 58s mark -> https://youtu.be/watch?v=3zgdZZmX7r8

Found what looks like a modern photo of a surviving pair of these.

It might not’ve been though. There was big advertising push in the early/middle 1900’s to get infants off breastmilk and onto formula as the “modern” way.

Even today, there are large differences related to socioeconomic class, in how many parents use formula. Also varies a LOT per country.

Since the 80’s, there has been a renewed push for breastfeeding. Advertising has been curtailed, for example, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Code_of_Marketing_of_Breast-milk_Substitutes

7-up or not, I have watched plenty of parents giving sugar sodas or other calorie laden drinks like sports beverages as a steady diet to young children. I can’t recall any that were straight up infants like in this ad. But certainly very young children. And those children, to my eye, did appear obese. Not to mention being set on a path they will struggle to get off of, later in life.

So much modern food is terrible for you, but addictive, and advertised everywhere.

Twice as fast as what?

As NOT using digit dialing!

Phones were around for a long time before you could just pick one up and dial a number of somebody halfway across the country to call them like magic. That’s a fairly newfangled way! Before that, there was no direct dialing. An operator at a switchboard at the phone company had to physically plug a cable to connect your phone line to your callee’s phone line. You had to talk to the operator to ask them to do that!

In the very early days, you would ask for the other party by name, and the operator would look up the right jack that way. Eventually, there were exchanges, and you might ask for a particular party at “Garfield 7”, or “Madison 3”. Those are the names in the Allan Sherman song I linked below, that he is complaining about losing due to the move to digit dialing. Which is also what this ad is about - trying to get the public on board with it.

Digit dialing was not totally rolled out until the 1960’s, although it was partial before that. New York City had switchboard operators in the 1880’s. So the way you are used to, of simply entering a number to reach someone, has been the universal method for much less than half the time telephones have existed!

Editing, here is a photo of switchboard operators plugging cables in the 1950’s. But clear back in the 1880’s, it happened like that, but more primitive of course than the 1950 photo here.

Allan Sherman himself wrote a spoof about Digit Dialing!

https://youtu.be/watch?v=hCFLanFgUPI

The ad’s byline calls it a saddle horse substitute, and looking at the mechanism, it appears the part you sit on was sprung and could move somewhat independently of the base.

So I’m guessing, you would hold onto the handles and then move the seat back and forth a bit like a modern rocking chair perhaps? Maybe it could provide a small amount of exercise in the process. Even some upper body workout if you used primarily your arms on the handles to supply the force.

How that translates to the most important health mechanism ever produced is left as an exercise for the reader.

On top of being the most important health mechanism ever produced, this ad might be the most important example ever produced of why you should pick a font and stick with that one for a little while.

Sounds right.

In the 1960’s, a band named themselves after this guy, in homage.

A nice find!

Huh… It looks very impractical to me, if so. But then, I am not a 1960’s high society lady, and I do not know about these kinds of things. Perhaps you are right.

Very possible that Pamela, and the Tom, Dick, and Harry hand guys, are no longer with us.

1962 was 64 years ago. How old was Pamela in this photo? I am terrible at age guessing! 25? That would put her at 89 today. If 30, then 94.

Possible… but it’s well past the average lifespan for someone born in the 1930s. The average American woman born in 1935 had a 63 year life expectancy.

If Pamela was a smoker in her life, not just when posing for ads, her expected span would be shorter than that average which also included non-smokers. Only 1/3 of women were smokers in the early 1960’s. Of course we don’t know from the ad if she was a smoker, or not.

Editing my own post to add: There is also the conditional factor to consider. While a woman born in 1935 might have had a 63 LE, there was a lot of infant morality in that figure, so the LE for a woman born in 1935 who had already reached 20-some years of age, would be higher than 63.

Glad to see they were so careful to avoid any hint of objectification!

What is the blue thing she is holding? It looks like a cheerleader pom-pom, but her attire is inconsistent with that.

Never heard of that lady, but TheMovieDB lists her film parts, which were mostly uncredited bit parts such as “Girl on Meat Packers Float”.

As well as, one assumes, whatever masterpiece of American cinema resulted from this ad.

Thanks, I edited the OP with your deduction (+ credited you for).

The scenery ones are cool though! Virtual travel to see far flung places, before the internet. Plus, you got to see it in 3D.

I never even knew there was a projector, until I saw this very ad!

But whatever year it was, $11 got you the projector, the normal viewer, and 15 reels!

I have to think that we have not come very far. Today, no arsenic wafers, but an epidemic of mental health crises, and people get plastic surgery to look like distorted Instagram-filter version of themselves.

If anyone isn’t familiar with Natalie Wood, she died by drowning under mysterious circumstances involving actor Robert Wagner and Christopher Walken. Her death was initially ruled accidental, but the case was re-opened in 2011. It’s all very shady.