Remembering the Buy-Centennial

There was a dark side to the American Bicentennial: American capitalism.

The over-commercialization of the Bicentennial started long before 1976. As early as September 1974 people were already starting to call it the "Buy-centennial," with many products designed to part a fool from his money with maximum efficiency. Commemorative cars? Check. Special coins? Check. Red, white and blue lawn chairs? Check. Useless parchment certificates proclaiming your patriotism? Check.

Literally, send a check and all of this could have been yours.

The commerce was everywhere. SeaWorld renamed one of its killer whales "Yankee Doodle." Companies marketed toilet seats with eagles underneath the lids. George Washington and other Revolutionary icons were painted onto just about any piece of crap you could imagine.

There were even awards to celebrate the "most tasteless exploitation" of the Bicentennial, with "winners" such as "Paul Revere" ice cream and red-white-and-blue funeral caskets. I'm sure that last one was some sort of violation of the Flag Code.

And it wasn't just these Bicentennial-themed products. Almost every retailer also got into the act, with special "Spirit of 76" sales starting in January and running rampant as Independence Day approached. 

What does all of this have to do with comics? Well, a) a few cartoonists made fun of this (sometimes in comic books, which we'll get to later in this blog); and b) quite a few cartoonists got hired to draw some of the awful ads hawking the buy-centennial, sometimes directly, sometimes through clip art sent to retailers all over the country. So in terms of this blog, it all totally applies.

Here's one good editorial cartoon about the Buy-Centennial, followed by just a fraction of the really awful ads that I've uncovered so far during my research:

An editorial and cartoon from the Sarasota Herald-Tribune dated September 22, 1974. The cartoon is simply signed "Smith," but I hope to unearth his whole name.

A lot of stories ran prices like this during the Bicentennial.

Existing mascots often found themselves wearing tri-corner hats and waving flags.

Not a cartoon, but this exact same clip art of sexy Uncle Sam shows up in newspapers all over the country.

Here's that same model in an ad for "Buy-sale-tennial Specials." Sheesh.

The British are coming...to watch HBO!

Follow the troops to Beth's Kitchen. Man, this one's offensive.

Ouch. That's some awful artwork.

This one is actually kind of cute.

Not the greatest drawing, but...

...it sure got used a lot. For a lot of different things. All over the country.

Another mascot embraces the day.

A sexy minuteman, er, maid, sells cars. This photo was used by companies all over the nation. Because sex.

Our founding fathers' best quotes turned into ads for various companies. This same spread shows up in regional papers all over the country selling different stuff for each town.

200th birthday, save $200. This clip art of a town crier show up all over the place. I love the awful paste-up job on the text here.

Another mascot dons the hat and picks up a flag.

So many companies did this. "America is 200, and we're 50, so it's exactly the same thing!"

Is pointing a gun at your customers ever a good idea?

Local businesses often ran photos or caricatures of their salespeople in their ads, but rarely like this.

I don't even know what this mascot is supposed to be.

What's funny about all of this is that a lot of the people who set out to exploit the Bicentennial actually ended up losing their shirts. Come July 5, 1976, whatever Bicentennial-branded products they didn't sell became instantly worthless. One guy in Utah bought 7,200 Bicentennial chains and medallions. By the end of 1976 he had about 7,120 left that he couldn't even give away. Our nation's landfills must all have a layer of red, white and blue crap from around this time for any hardy archeologists willing to dig deep and explore.

Of course, none of this is much different from the aisles of made-in-China crap we see in every store every year come July 4th. Right now I can go to my local grocery store, drug store or Wal-Mart to buy poorly made flag t-shirts, flag plastic plates, patriotic disposable forks, cups with bald eagles on the side, and maybe -- if you look hard enough -- an actual flag or two buried amidst the cheap junk we used to "celebrate" Independence Day. That's another reason why I'm doing this blog -- because not much has changed since 1976. And it probably never will.

PS -- I have quite a few more of these bad ads, so expect a sequel to this post in the near future!