December 4, 2007
Vintage Toronto Ads: Leaping into the Holiday Spirit
The holiday shopping season has descended upon the city, along with an early blast of winter. This combination may lead shoppers to unconsciously purchase items to cure their winter blues, even if the calendar shows that fall has a few more weeks to go.
Today's ad offers a prescription from Simpsons and Esprit to keep free-spirited souls in an ecstatic mood come February. A trip down to the historic Queen Street department store promised relief, with a checkout line standing in for a waiting room.
This cure for the midwinter blahs appears to have worked for our models, who discovered that the colourful zig-zag sweater patterns unlocked a yearning for childhood games. They called up the rest of the gang, found an empty studio, and played leapfrog, jump rope and dodgeball for several hours.
Source: Toronto Life, December 1984
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God help me, I remember this ad! This ad, and others like it, came out around the time Simpsons decided to get "young and hip," which came at a huge cost: the decline of their well-established (and well-financed) senior crowd. As a result, the older genration stopped shopping at Simpsons, which led to them going out of business.
Still, I think the Belinda Carlisle-esque hairstyles are hot!
A lesson that Eaton's failed to learn a decade later - to this day, my sister laughs at their "Diversity" attempt to be with it.