Description:
Original Hungarian vintage commercial poster from 1949 by Gyula Macskássy.
The history of coffee substitute products is as old as the history of coffee. Coffee drinking spread the world between the 15th and the 18th centuries. However, the expensive price, the hardships with the availability or the absolute lack of the product were the reasons of replacing it during ages. Several raw materials were used for coffee substitutes, such as rye, barley, malt, etc. After a while, the chicory plant was also found to create “fake” coffee from. It is still the most common basic commodity of coffee substitute products nowadays. The chicory-coffee was originated from the 17th century Europe, and it became an everyday need during the Continental Blockade during the Napoleonic Wars. During the years due to various reasons it was almost always hard and costly to get real coffee. In the time of this poster, Socialism, the economic decay and the Socialist attitude towards production resulted in a situation where real coffee was hardly available on the market and if it was, it was too expensive for the masses to afford it. Therefore the majority of people chose to drin coffee substitute. The other advantage besides being cheap of the substitute coffee was that it did not contain caffeine, thus children were allowed to consume it.
On this poster the character from the coffe package comes to life and happily serves the coffee. The colors used in this composition often appeared on coffee advertisements: brown refers to the coulour of coffee while yellow is a vivied and lively hue, what one expects to feel like when drinking coffee.
