Life, 1924-04-24 · page 36 of 36
Life — April 24, 1924 — page 36: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is primarily a **product advertisement**, not a political cartoon. It features a fictional character, "Uncle Freemantle Tobias Hopkins," a retired sea captain with an exaggerated adventuring backstory (shipwrecks, pirates, cannibals, mutinies). The humor is gentle rather than satirical: his extreme life experiences are played for comic effect to establish him as a credible endorser of the shaving cream. The narrative suggests that even a hardened seafarer who lost his whiskers during a mutiny would appreciate Colgate's product. The ad includes a technical diagram explaining how the cream softens beard hair at its base, a mail-in coupon for a free trial, and closes with the slogan "Truth in advertising implies honesty in manufacture"—reflecting early 20th-century advertising standards emphasizing product benefits over pure salesmanship.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
LIFE - OLGATE for better shaving Uncle Freemantle Tobias Hopkins was a retired sea captain. He had been almost shipwrecked in every quarter of the globe; he had fought pirates; he had met can- nibals in their Sunday clothes, and monkeys in Sc Sea Islands had stunned him by dropping cocoanuts on his head. Once there was a mutiny on Uncle Freemantle’s ship, and when he got it quelled he had hardly a whisker left. “After that,”” he said, ‘I'd ’a’ shaved clean every day if I'd ’a’ had anything good for makin’ lather.”’ Uncle Freemantle would certainly have appre- ciated Colgate’s Rapid-Shave Cream. t makes a wonderful lather for softening the beard at the base—where the razor’s work is done. Besides making shaving easy, Colgate’s leaves the face soothed and velvety, with no smart or disagree- able dryness. Uf you would like a free tr enough for 12 easier sha had, please fill COLGATE & CO. Thisdiagrammatic nifiedcross Dep. 23 section shows how the close, moist 199 Fulton St., New York lather made by Colgate’s Rapid- Please send me the free trial y Shave Cream goes to the base of tube of Colgate’s Rapid-Shave each hair of the beard. The oily Cream for better shaving. coating upon the hair is quickly y emulsified by the lather. This per- Name : LoS mits the moisture carried in the lather to soften the hair at the base, Address 5 where itmeets the edge of the razor. comicbooks.com