Did you know that a jack-'o-lantern named "The Chew-Chew Man" watches how you devour shredded wheat?  "He'll get you if you don't watch out," from Rod and Gun, 1898.

"Analysis of the perspiration of a brain-worker shows the amount of brain effort by the volume of little particles of Phosphate of Potash thrown off by the brain when working."  From an ad for Grape-Nuts in St. Nicholas magazine, 1904.

There's more going on with a magician's hat than we're at liberty to discuss, as we see in this ad from 1891.

Here's a precursor to Ram Dass's "be here now," from Canadian Grocer, 1898.

"Do not depend on the sun," from an ad in St. Nicholas magazine, 1903.

Here's a precursor to the film Strange Days, from an 1892 ad.

An ad from 1886.

Sometimes happiness is right in front of us, as we see in this ad from 1893.

"Children's umbrellas"?  But as the Waldorf philosophy professes, "children should not be spared from experiencing the weight of objects."  This giant children's umbrella appears in an advertisement from 1899.

Guildenstern is famously not the very button on Fortune's cap, and we're pleased to reveal the very button in question, from an 1877 advertisement.

Father Time is on the bottle again, from Le Guincaillier, 1907.

Here's a precursor to the haunted bendy door in Disneyland's Haunted Mansion, from Ladies' Home Journal, 1948.

From McElroy's Philadelphia City Directory, 1837.  Can you guess the context?  (Highlight to view): An ad for elocution lessons with special instruction in gestures.

A tip of the hat to nobody in particular, from The Principles of Advertising Arrangement by Frank Alvah Parsons, 1912.

From an ad in The Saturday Evening Post, 1839.

"You could dip this house in water": an ad in American Homes and Gardens, 1905.

This vintage Colgate ad (from 1873) reminds us that we know our own teeth only through the looking glass!