You've Come A Long Way, Super-Baby

Apparently, in 1971, smoking was the equivalent of being a superhero...

It's not exactly comics but in 1971, superheroes were very much pretty exclusively from comic books. There were the occasional superhero made specifically for television, largely starting in the late '60s following the Batman craze, but like the Adam West show that prompted them, they were generally played for camp. So to put a superhero in a seemingly serious print ad like this would've been drawing more on feminist icon of the times, Wonder Woman who appeared on the cover Ms. Magazine #1 that same year, than anything else. The superhero model here, by the way, is Veronica Hamel, who appeared in many Virginia Slims ads of the time.

However, like many things from the 1970s, I don't think this aged well.

Related Items history