When you think of babies the first material you associate with them is – plastic wrap? Or at least that’s what Mad Men of the 1950s were trying to say in full-page advertisements. Sometimes I look at advertisements nowadays and shake my head “what are the advertisements selling?” but it gives me comfort to know this isn’t just a modern-day phenomenon. The two-decade advertisement campaign for Du Pont cellophane wrap has me searching for some logic, and I’m sure you too will find the advertisements baffling.
The connection between product and promotion was a little too distant in this series of advertisements made by Du Pont cellophane. Between the 1930s through the 1950s Du Pont was trying to drive home the scientific fresh sealing technology of their tight seal plastic wrap, the notion being that food would be good as new if wrapped and stored with Du Pont plastic wrap.
But babies? Luckily the advertisements are merely illustrations, we can only hope that there weren’t parents ready to subject their children to being covered in cellophane. Babies and purity are a feasible connection to make, but the seemingly dangerous imagery tips the scales to a level of absurdity.
Du Pont’s concept wasn’t off, historically, babies have always been associated with innocence, purity, and cleanliness (every parent knows babies are only figuratively clean), but between the start and finish, the advertising campaign’s meaning seems…lost? These advertisements ran only up until the early 1950s, which was around the same time that plastic suffocation warnings were required on many household plastics. Since the advent plastics, infant suffocation was rampant, parents were commonly using dry cleaning bags as crib liners under sheets to reduce the mess from bedwetting. The demise of the plastic wrap baby advertisements coincides with the plastic suffocation warnings, not that the advertisements caused babies to suffocate, but for the cellophane company it seemed in bad taste to continue the advertisements.
Du Pont’s “fresher in plastic wrap” advertisements included other items like cigars, underwear, and cheese, but children in plastic tops the list as the weirdest items to wrap in plastic.