What's My Line?

Hi Guys!

If you've been following Hybrid for a while, you probably know that I have a thing for Elsie the Cow!  She's an overlooked and underrated anthro advertising character who spent decades touting Borden Dairy products!  From the 1930s to the 1990s, she was the bovine face of milk in the United States!

The golden age of Elsie advertising began with the 1939 New York World's Fair and ran through the early 1950s.  During that period, Elsie appeared in dozens of fully painted ads created by Walter Early.  In my opinion, these were some of the most completely worked out expressions of an anthro character outside of Disney and Warner Brothers.    

In each of these ads, Elsie appears alongside her husband, Elmer the Bull, and their children, Beulah and (a little later) Beauregard.  There would be a picture together with a caption, usually in bright red letters.  The caption was generally a quote from Elsie, often provocative and designed to pull the reader in to her world of milk and cheese!

Many times I've wondered how the pictures would stand up without the captions and if they could be read in any other way than what the advertisers intended!  So today I'm putting it to you guys:  what's going on in these images?  What's the story and what are the characters saying?  If you have any flashes of insight, let me know in the comments!

Thanks, and see you next time!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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