July 1936

 Astounding Stories, “Astounding Stories, July 1936,” Drew University Library Special Collections

This page in the July 1936 edition of Astounding Stories features a collection of advertisements printed in black and white. The advertisements all feature titles written in bold text, with descriptions of what the product is, a service for the reader to use, or job opportunities. These descriptions are accompanied by a small image to make up the 17 ads that spread across two pages. Some of the ads specifically target a male audience, either with the language that is used by the advertisement or with the specific item being advertised. For instance, featured on this page is an ad for the “Prosager”, which according to the ad is meant to allow any man to massage his prostate at home. This advertisement is obviously targeted toward men. Other ads come off as more gender-neutral, the ad does this by including women in the images, or using gender-neutral language in the ad. One example of this is the Ford Insitute’s “Work For The Government'' ad. This page demonstrates a style of displaying advertisements, with there being a bunch of unrelated ads featured on the same page. The advertisements on this page seem to be attempting to reach a wide audience, with them all targeting different ages, genders, etc,. This eclectic collection of ads demonstrates to us that there was not an expected audience for the magazine because of the wide variety of products, services, and even jobs being advertised, without a collective group that they are all targeting.