I ripped this ad out of a Reader's Digest a long time ago, so I don't have the exact issue attribution. Other sources on the web claim 1960.
In any case, this is a fine example of the category of subliminal ad known technically as "You can put the liquid from your long thick bottle into my melting ice cream anytime, honey!"
Here's a fascinating version for what was then perceived as a different market.
A Scottish child and a Native-American child pour hair tonic on the head of an elderly Anglo man and massage it in, while a child soldier out of some European comic opera stands by with sword upraised in tribute.
The only sensible part of this weird iconography is the Scottish kid. Once upon a time, right up to, oh, the 1960s, "anything Scottish = cheap and economical" was standard advertising shorthand.
We're aligning our product with a subculture that is the butt (no pun intended) of thousands of late-night comedy-show jokes, and whose practitioners are seen as eccentric perverts.
That said, I bet the ad agency had a lot of fun at the photo shoot.
Yeah, she was blind and socialist. But the important question is -- can her name help sell sunglasses? A Chinese eyewear company thinks the answer is yes. Which proves, I guess, that the Chinese have become just as adept as us Americans at recycling cultural heroes into hawkers of overpriced crap. (Thanks to Bob Pagani for the link!) Check out the Helen Keller Sunglasses ad below:
Category: Business, Advertising, Products, Sexuality, Junk Food, 1960's, Double Entendres and Nudge-Nudge, Wink-Wink