Life, 1927-09-29 · page 37 of 38
Life — September 29, 1927 — page 37: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This is a **full-page advertisement**, not satire or political commentary. It's an Ipswich Hosiery ad for men's socks from an early 20th-century issue of *Life* magazine. The humor is purely **wordplay-based advertising**: the headline "What a Sock!" and repeated references to socks getting "kicked around" and "kicking" are puns. The illustration shows two men literally kicking a giant sock between them like a football, visually literalizing the sock-kicking metaphor. The ad's selling point is practical: Ipswich socks are reinforced in high-wear areas because regular socks get damaged from rough use. The copy emphasizes durability, style options (stripes, checks, patterns), and "moderate prices." This represents typical early 20th-century advertising strategy: combining visual humor, puns, and product benefits to catch readers' attention in magazine pages.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
PSWICH SOCKS are made to stand the kick- ing around that socks are bound to get. They wear better than you ever imagined socks could wear, for they are amply reinforced where the kicking around usually does the damage. The new Ipswich Fancies for this fall and winter are worth going a long way to get. They come in stripes and | checks and individual figure patterns, in wool and lisle mixtures, rayon and wool, rayon and fine mercerized yarn, When you see Ipswich socks in the store, you'll ger a real kick out of their mod- erate prices. PSWICH_ HOSIERY FOR MEN IPSWICH MILLS, Ipswich, Mass. LAWRENCE & CO., Sole Selling Agents comicbooks.com