Today's collection is a series of advertising cards by Leaf International, a Chicago confectionery company founded in the 1940s. These small, cheaply printed paper placards would slip into a window of a gumball machine to advertise a given product, meaning they had to appeal to both the distributor and store owners picking what candies to stock (advertised to them via vendor catalogs, photos of which are interspersed in this post) and to the children dispensing the coins. Most of the candies Leaf produced were fairly generic—half inch balls or disks with only slight variations in color or taste—so the company constantly rebranded and renamed them to appeal to different target audiences, trending tastes, and seasonal events. Notable examples are the halloween candies, as well as the "no-cola" bubble-gum, a clear homage to Seven Up's 1970s "Un-Cola" campaign that featured art by
Issue Twenty Seven: Sweet and Sour
Issue Twenty Seven: Sweet and Sour
Issue Twenty Seven: Sweet and Sour
Today's collection is a series of advertising cards by Leaf International, a Chicago confectionery company founded in the 1940s. These small, cheaply printed paper placards would slip into a window of a gumball machine to advertise a given product, meaning they had to appeal to both the distributor and store owners picking what candies to stock (advertised to them via vendor catalogs, photos of which are interspersed in this post) and to the children dispensing the coins. Most of the candies Leaf produced were fairly generic—half inch balls or disks with only slight variations in color or taste—so the company constantly rebranded and renamed them to appeal to different target audiences, trending tastes, and seasonal events. Notable examples are the halloween candies, as well as the "no-cola" bubble-gum, a clear homage to Seven Up's 1970s "Un-Cola" campaign that featured art by