Starling Fitness: Daily writings on Fitness, Diet, and Health

This ad for Pepsi shows how food advertisers will say ANYTHING to get you to buy them:

It reads:

Wonderful what a figure can do for a dress.

Those are mighty handsome creations they’re showing in today’s finest dress shop windows and in the stunning pages of our current fashion magazines.

But what fashion editor or window trimmer would even dream of showing them on anything but the typically slender figures of today?

Wonderful what a figure can do for a dress! But just as wonderful what the modern trend to lighter food and drink is doing for the modern figure.

That is the trend with which Pepsi-Cola has kept pace. Reduced in calories, today’s Pepsi is never heavy, never too sweet.

It is the modern, the light refreshment. Refresh without filling. Have a Pepsi.

This ad isn’t a lone rogue out there in the advertising world. Pepsi ran a LONG line of ads like this. You can see them here:

• Found in Mom’s Basement: Vintage ad campaign: Pepsi-Cola, 1950s, Part I

• Found in Mom’s Basement: Vintage ad campaign: Pepsi-Cola, 1950s, Part II

Considering how many calories Pepsi has, I have no idea how they even considered promoting it as “light refreshment.” I wonder, did anyone actually believe them?

Update 11-25-09: Here is another Pepsi is Light Refreshment ad:

• vintage_ads on LiveJournal