The Land List -- Polaroid Advertising Samples

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This page presents a 'sampler' of Polaroid advertising from various points in the company's history. The specific ads presented here will be rotated periodically, with perhaps between 5 and 8 ads shown at any given time.

COPYRIGHTS: The ads here are Copyright © Polaroid Corporation, with no permissions expressed or implied. I will be happy to remove any/all ad images if requested by Polaroid. [I'd ask permission first, but, unfortunately, that's a bit tricky from a legal point of view too.] In this light, I am deliberately limiting the content of this page to only a few (5 - 8) images, and will only be presenting advertising of obsolete products no longer sold by Polaroid Corporation. Also, please do not send me requests for previous ads shown here; this will be a see-em-while-you-can sort of page at this point.

Content is provided for educational purposes only, and obviously do not describe current offers being made by Polaroid Corp.

Click on the thumbnails to view a larger image. Images will load in a separate window. Most of these are 100 dpi or so greyscale .GIF images roughly 150k - 200k in size. In addition, most are scans of photocopies made from magazines, and so are considerably inferior in quality to the original ad source. Even at this resolution, they should still be legible, however.


Modern Photography, August 1949. This early advertisement introduces the reader to the basic concept of instant photography and tries to demonstrate how easy the Polaroid Land Camera (Model 95) is to use.

Modern Photography, December 1951. "This Christmas, thrill your family with the world's most exciting camera!" This advertisement also notes the potential social/fun aspects of instant photography.

Modern Photography, January 1954. "Snapshot in 60 seconds!" Here's another Christmas-themed ad. The target is similar, but the style and layout is different. Note the addition of the Model 110 "Pathfinder" camera.

Modern Photography, October 1956. "Go Ahead... Get It!" A primary message in this ad is the ease of purchase via credit with convienient weekly payments. These time-installment purchase plans were often mentioned in Polaroid ads from the 1950's.

Modern Photography, July 1957. "It's a Darb!" Steve Allen did a lot of commercials for Polaroid on his telvision show in the mid/late 1950's. This magazine ad is essentially a 'translation' in printed form of a typical Steve Allen TV ad.

Modern Photography, July 1961. "As easy to use as your first camera..." This two-page spread introduced magazine readers to the J66 camera.



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Last updated 11/27/2002

"Polaroid", "Land Camera" and other camera names are trademarks of Polaroid Corporation. No endorsement or approval by Polaroid Corporation is implied, nor is Polaroid responsible for the accuracy of the content of this web site. All information is provided on an 'as-is' basis; the author of this site is not liable for damages of any sort (financial, physical, or otherwise) which might arise from the use (or misuse) of information on this site.

Advertising images Copyright © Polaroid Corporation.
All other content Copyright ©1992-2002 by Martin (Marty) Kuhn / mkuhn@rwhirled.com
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