Life — May 10, 1929 — page 5: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "An American Tragedy" - Ethyl Gasoline Advertisement This is a satirical comic strip advertisement for Ethyl Gasoline, a brand that added tetraethyl lead to fuel. The "tragedy" follows Mr. Jones through a domestic crisis: his wife sends his suit to cleaners, discovers a scrap of paper with "Ethyl" written on it, assumes it's a woman's name, and tells him she thinks poorly of him and his mysterious "Ethyl." The husband rushes to an important business conference to prove his innocence, then takes his wife to a gas station where they discover "Ethyl" is merely the gasoline brand. The ad's joke: marital conflict resolved through the product itself. The satire mocks both domestic suspicion and aggressive advertising by treating a gasoline brand as worthy of causing serious relationship drama.