Advertising
A holiday adfeaturing Merlin, Wart, and Archimedes from the Disney film The Sword in the Stone advises that Doubl-Glo Holiday Decorations will give any home “the magic of Merlin.”
In an ad for Hammermill Bond letterhead, Lancelot sits astride his steed, towering over a defeated knight lying on the ground below him. The text urges: “If you’re used to challenges, your letterhead should show it.”
Some of the most creative uses of Arthurian imagery have been by advertisers who tried to distinguish their products by linking them with the romance and the values of Camelot.
An image of Lancelot and Elaine of Astolat by Henry Pitz (who illustrated several retellings of Arthurian tales). According to the Hydrox ad, “all people favor [the cookies] highly. And so will you, madam . . .”—perhaps punning on the “favor,” the scarlet sleeve, that Elaine gives to Lancelot. This is one of a number of Hydrox’s Arthurian-oriented ads.
A wartime ad that appeared in Fortune in October, 1943, for Rustless Stainless Steel. The text declares that the company’s process for making stainless steel seems as magical as that by which Arthur received Excalibur from the Lady of the Lake.
A Saturday Evening Post ad for Reed & Barton “Sir Galahad” silverware with an image of Sir Galahad suggests that the company’s quest for the perfect silverware was comparable to Galahad’s quest for the Grail.
In a Double Mint gum ad, Guinevere appears as a woman struggling to keep her teeth attractive—a problem that presumably extends as far back as “Medieval Castles” but that can be solved by more chewing, especially of Double Mint gum.
An ad for a gown by Gotham that will make its wearer “feel as radiant as Guinevere.” Although the queen is depicted in “Pennant pink,” the gown also comes in other shades, including “Lancelot blue” and “Serf beige.”
Guinevere appears again, alongside Queen Elizabeth I and Marie Antoinette, in an ad for America’s Independent Electric Light and Power Companies. According to the ad, the Queens envy “Susan Smith,” who “represents every modern housewife in America,” because they never had “such a wonderful servant as the electricity she uses in her home every day.”