Czech Consumer Fairy Tales

This book is a guide to a century of folk and artificial fairy tales in the service of the consumer industry. It tells of knights who saved the kingdom with miraculous soap, of princesses freed from spells by the scent of doughnuts fried in margarine, of poor girls who became queens because they could brew the most delicious rye coffee, or of valiant warriors hidden in every bottle of Karotela. Picture cards, leaflets and small booklets were published by private firms in the Austro-Hungarian Empire as well as by state-owned enterprises in socialist Czechoslovakia. These colourful printed materials fascinated children, even though they offered only condensed versions of classic tales or naive texts tailored to specific goods, which directly replaced traditional magical objects within the narrative. Advertising and promotional fairy tales, illustrated by popular artists as well as untrained anonymous draughtsmen, are among the defining cultural phenomena of the twentieth century. They influenced the imagination of several generations, helped sell industrial products, but did not serve only merchants. They also sought to educate: they taught children about hygiene and balanced nutrition, and explained to them the benefits of insurance, the importance of saving, and the collection of raw materials. They only disappeared from the public sphere after the fall of the communist dictatorship, when they were swept away by the flood of electronic technologies and the associated new trends in the entertainment and advertising industries.