Very Phallic Vintage Ads Prove Agencies Were Thinking With Their Dicks

Copyranter posted seven phallic ads in his column on Buzzfeed, and each one is worse than the next. It would be nice to construct some in-depth commentary about visual literacy and subliminal messages, but all I can think is They knew what this looked like, right? And someone still gave it the green light? I mean, they could all see the dicks, right? Right?

The ad above, which Copyranter calls a “dicknic,” seems like it could be innocent.

But someone knew exactly what they were doing in this Texas International ad. (And phallic ads still get published all the time; vodka companies love cock.) But while the After Six ad — with a tag line that includes the words “have a ball” — is pretty overt, there’s nothing more disturbing than the Chiquita ad with children. Don’t look at it too long, Dateline might come a-knocking on your door.