Gapers Block published from April 22, 2003 to Jan. 1, 2016. The site will remain up in archive form. Please visit Third Coast Review, a new site by several GB alumni.
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Saturday, April 20
For the record, this vintage ad from the "Soda Pop Board of America," based here in Chicago, is completely fake.
As handily annotated above, the ad features obviously satirical copy ("fitting in" is a purported health claim), a Coca-Cola bottle with a backwards logo, and a fake address (there's a Hart Street, but it runs north-south, for just a block). And then there's the name -- Soda Pop Board? While very wholesome, almost nobody calls sweetened carbonated beverages "soda pop," least of all the industry itself. It was created as a spoof for the sadly defunct The City Desk which published nothing but fictional news. But hey, don't tell that to this guy.