VTT - Christmas & Magazines

The Christmas subscription offer for The Farmer's Wife magazine is printed on a 1¢ postal card. If you paid for your subscription before February 1, 1928, you could receive a three year subscription to the magazine for only 85 cents. A 1938 Time magazine article reported that "No newsstands carry the Farmer's Wife but it goes through the mail anywhere at $1 for three years."

Even a larger magazine like American Home seems ridiculously cheap compared to today's prices. The subscription order form in the December 1939 issue offered 3 gift subscriptions for only $2.

The American Home magazine was a monthly magazine published from 1928 to 1977. The cover on this December, 1939 issue of The American Home has illustrations from Walt Disney's Pinocchio and advertises "More than 200 Xmas Ideas."

Many of the Christmas ideas in the magazine would still be appropriate today, but some of them seem quaint or are outmoded:

• If in doubt about the right gift, send cigarettes. They're always welcome.
• Jolly, bright oilcloth ensembles will be welcomed into any woman's kitchen.
• Small models of New England's most picturesque spired churches, tiny Cape Cod houses, little old school buildings, all may be sliced from a mere loaf of bread in a manner astonishing to see and exciting to do.

In contrast to the low priced magazine subscriptions are the relatively high prices on electrical appliances. The prices on toasters don't seem much different than today's prices. In the Toastmaster ad, a 1-slice toaster is $9.95, and a 2-slice toaster is $16.00.

Pyrex advertised "Merry Pyrexmas Bargains" at prices that were "reduced 30% to 50% in the last 2 years." The double duty casserole with pie plate cover was called a "pyrexmas surprise." This was priced at 95¢ for the 3 qt. size, 75¢ for the 2 qt., 65¢ for 1-1/2 qt., and 65¢ for the 1 qt.

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