Thursday, August 18, 2011

Advertisement for Hires Root Beer from 1892 children's magazine

Sorry I was away for a couple days! It's been kind of the perfect storm (somewhat literally) of (1) a thunderbumper that fried our home computer's hard drive; (2) an extremely long day at work on the first day of high school sports practice in Pennsylvania; (3) and then, happily, the Otto family taking a mini-vacation to see my mom in Wallingford, Pennsylvania, and attend a Phillies game.1

But I have a couple makeshift tricks up my sleeve to get things rolling again...

Here's an advertisement for Hires Root Beer that took up one quarter of the back cover of the June 1892 issue of Wide Awake, a children's magazine:


Wide Awake was published monthly from July 1875 until August 1893 by Daniel Lothrop. It was eventually merged with another magazine of its type -- St. Nicholas.2

Footnotes
1. Final score: Phillies 9, Diamondbacks 2. Most amusing moment: Watching Phillies rookie reliever Michael Schwimer walk to and from the bullpen while sporting a pink Hello Kitty backpack, part of the bullpen's hazing ritual.
2. I highly recommend the detailed history of St. Nicholas magazine that the website Flying Dreams has put together. It's a truly stellar and historically valuable labor of love.

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