Looking back one hundred years when mass circulation printed journals were still expanding their sales and the advertising industry was dependent upon them to an extent inconceivable today. Every year Punch magazine published three special issues that since 1924 had include colour pages of cartoons and advertising - this is a selection of pages from the winter almanack for 2025. Punch was a humorous weekly magazine first published in 1841, founded by Henry Mayhew and Ebenezer Landells. At the time, Mayhew was a prominent playwright and journalist with progressive instincts and an interest in social research. Ten years on his magnum opus, London Labour and the London Poor (1851) was published, going on become a pioneering landmark in the development of social studies. By contrast Punch was a persistently reactionary publication, patriotic to a fault, obsessed with the empire, the landed gentry and country pursuits.
A reason for publishing the winter almanack was to attract Christmas advertising revenue including premium slots in colour. By 1925 advertising-led consumerism was already flourishing, although only a minority of advertisers were willing to experiment and escape the prevailing preference for verbose text and conservative design and illustration. A rare exception pops up in this issue with E McKnight Kauffer’s salute to the bracing powers of Eno’s Fruit Salt - a singular burst of visual energy in a sea of torpidity. Harry Rountree does his best to inject some vitality on behalf of Sharp’s Super-Kreem Toffees but most of the featured illustrators strike a decorous note, powerless to resist the copywriters’ insertion of blocks of stodgy text that few would ever read. R T Cooper is worth a mention for his radically simplified limited colour image of a cavalry officer in the service of Gilbey’s whiskey. The ads for Ovaltine and Mackintosh's Toffee show inventive use of pen and ink. Remarkably, six of these brands are still available in 2025.
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