Today's Tidbit... Pre-1940 Advertising Premium Football Art

I've mentioned many times and shown excerpts from football-themed advertising premiums given out at point-of-sale from the mid-1890s (or earlier) until today. The most common premium has been the pocket schedule. About the size of a credit card, they come in two sides or four and fit in any pocket or wallet. They were convenient items before internet access and continue in use today, so somebody uses them.

I especially like the composite schedules for national and sometimes regional audiences. They typically devote the bulk of their pages to the schedules of several hundred schools, but I enjoy them because they are time capsules of football that year. Besides the team schedules, they often summarize the previous year's results, top player profiles, plays, coaches, and stadiums. They have diagrams of the official's signals and explanations of the season's rule changes. They sometimes show recent All-Americans or all-time best teams.

A side benefit of them being advertising premiums is that they contain advertising. Many tout long-forgotten brands and products using language and imagery that would not cut the mustard today.

And then there are the premium covers. Many had run-of-the-mill artwork. They are cheap and unimaginative, but perhaps they caught the eye of those who appreciated that style. My eye goes to the covers that stand out as different for the times or seem to capture the essence of commercial art during the period.

Today, we'll look at a selection of pre-1940s covers that are cool in one way or another, and we'll show covers from 1940 and beyond tomorrow.

Widow Jones manufactured suits for boys, and what well-dressed boy did not want to carry a copy of the 1896 football rules in his pocket?

-Click the images to enlarge-