Now that we're in the future, let's look back at the past.

January 4, 2010 11:30 AM

The Vintage Ad Browser "aims to collect vintage ads from a variety of sources, including comic books, CD-Roms, websites, APIs, your submissions, book, magazine & comic book scans, and more."

At the time of this post, the site contains 123,286 ads. Brought to you by the creator of Cover Browser (previously), where you can peruse almost half a million covers of "comics, books, and more."

posted by tractorfeed (15 comments total)

Advertisements are always the most interesting thing about old media - so in that respect, this is awesome.

The "buy at eBay" links not so much.
posted by Joe Beese at 11:35 AM on January 4, 2010

That is a very, very large number of ads. It compares favorably to 9000, which seems to be the threshold for "very large" in this day and age.
posted by LSK at 11:37 AM on January 4, 2010 [2 favorites]

A great example of how back-handed compliments are not "non-racist".
posted by DU at 11:42 AM on January 4, 2010

You know, it used to be that I could make money by selling Grit. Now I can make money by scanning Grit!
posted by infinitewindow at 11:54 AM on January 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

Fantastic. This one made me want to eat what I've never heard of before . . . "dimond," anyone?
posted by bearwife at 12:01 PM on January 4, 2010

I think that there's something wrong with her hands.
posted by Read at 12:29 PM on January 4, 2010 [1 favorite]

Great post. I wonder if the nineties aesthetic (two examples) is ever going to make a comeback? At the time I thought ads like the ones above looked absolutely fantastic, but in hindsight... not so much.
posted by soundofsuburbia at 12:32 PM on January 4, 2010

Fabulous!
posted by punkfloyd at 12:36 PM on January 4, 2010

Hey! Did you know there's this stuff called asbestos that does lots of neat things?
posted by minimii at 1:00 PM on January 4, 2010

I wonder if the nineties aesthetic is ever going to make a comeback?

Slash in a Marshall amp ad? Timeless.
posted by futureisunwritten at 1:13 PM on January 4, 2010

...Now I can make money by scanning Grit!

Hahaha. Actually wondering how this is done, I see a lot of "via" that link to flickr, allposters and so on. Spidering for ads then sorting them somehow?
posted by dabitch at 3:53 PM on January 4, 2010

Buy your OWN Disk Drive!.
posted by sleslie at 5:06 PM on January 4, 2010

I feel a bit ick now...
posted by pompomtom at 7:06 PM on January 4, 2010

what
were
we
thinking
?
posted by Ratio at 9:39 PM on January 4, 2010 [2 favorites]

Oh, that kind of browser. I was wondering if I had to bring along my Ad-Blocker.
posted by oceano at 2:01 AM on January 5, 2010