NOTE: This is a non-functional preview. Nothing here! As of January 2026, I'm still working on it. I hadn't intended to do the 90s, but it seems necessary to do, to round it all out.

This one . . .

This one is hard.

Part of the problem is simply a lack of source material. No Life magazine for ads. Not that many magazines at all, at least as far as I can find: they weren't held back in the quantities of the previous years, it seems. They don't show up in antique stores in great number.

Then there's the problem of the nature of the era. It was the shortest of decades. Most decades are ten years, but they slop over their calendrical containers. The 70s went from 1973 to 1983, for example. Same with the 80s. The 90s probably begin around 1993, but they slam to a close on 9.11, 2001. In between we had a two-track culture, with the Happy Campbell Soup culture over a "grunge" culture that seemed oddly aimless and misguided. Was this not a land of plenty?

People forget that the early 90s were full of economic anxiety and mutterings of American decline. Eventually, the rise of the conspiracies galore, political and cultural. Over it all, a cheery commercial culture that continued to plow the same furrows as TV ads of the 80s.

It's looking better and better as we get further and further, but that's always the case, and never the whole story.

Anyway: I have about 150 pages in the hopper, and hope to start it up in mid-2026.