Page 8 - The Collector's Companion: Issue CC101

Twenty little salesmen

The end of the heyday for matchbook advertising

1985, USA. Over 17 billion matchbooks were estimated
to have been produced that year. In Brooklyn, New
York, 6 million of those carried the words, ‘Law Offices
of Edward Horn - Free Consultation’.
Advertising by lawyers had only been legalised by the
Supreme Court eight years earlier and in July 1985,
Chief Justice Warren Burger called it “sheer shyster-
ism”. Less than 10% of lawyers were advertising at this
time, and far fewer would have considered doing so on
a matchbook!
It was Edward Horn’s friend Al Parker who gave him the
idea - Parker had been advertising his U.S. Auto School
on matchbooks for 20 years. Matchbook advertising
peaked in the 1970s (with 25 factories producing more
than 35 billion matchbooks per year) but began to
dwindle in the 1980s with the arrival of the disposable
lighter and later, smoking bans.
Horn’s matchbooks, like many others, were manufac-
tured by D. D. Bean (est. 1938) in New Hampshire who
now remain the only matchbook producer left in North
America.

1980s matchbooks come from a time when they were
still ephemeral. They sat in bowls in everywhere from
hotels and restaurants to pharmacies and the smoker
saw the printed cover each time they struck one of the
twenty matches - twenty little salesmen.
These restaurant matchbooks, clearly lacking in design
budget, are charmingly basic in appearance. With little
space they get to the point, perhaps with the help of a
slogan or simple graphic, serving as a usable business
card.

In recent years there has been a bit of a resurgence
in restaurants using matchbooks, despite the smoking
bans. These days, fancy artwork is a must - most are
taken as mementos with the average matchbook-giving
restaurant getting through 20,000 books a year.

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