Life, 1912-04-18 · page 2 of 54
Life — April 18, 1912 — page 2: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **Wrigley's Spearmint Gum advertisement**, not political satire. The ad promotes buying gum "by the box" and features a delivery man or vendor carrying an oversized gum package. The circular text makes exaggerated health claims typical of early 20th-century advertising: the gum supposedly aids digestion, preserves teeth, freshens breath, and suppresses appetite. It claims buying by the box costs "little by the package, but less by the box of twenty packages"—a bulk-purchase incentive. The tagline "The Flavor Lasts" emphasizes product durability. This reflects pre-regulation advertising practices when companies made unsubstantiated medical claims freely. Modern readers would recognize this as misleading health marketing that would violate today's FDA standards.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
it byw the Box of any dealer eat you need it. Every time you smoke you need it. Every time you should eat, and don’t feel hungry, gs, you need it. Every time and don’t want to, you need it. And every time you need it, you Aave it, if you buy it by the box. This breath puri- fying, teeth preserving, appetite and digestion aiding dainty costs little by the package, but less by the box of twenty packages.