In their never-ending quest for sales, syndicates will offer editors a cartoon feature designed to complement just about any page of their newspaper, except maybe the obituaries. Addled-Ads, whose utterly superfluous hyphen was thankfully dropped by the time of the samples above, was offered by the Chicago Sun-Times‘ Field Syndicate for classified ad pages. The feature was drawn by Harry Lutke and the humorously mis-worded classified ads collected by Bob Schless.
The feature debuted on October 3 1949, and found few takers in newspaperdom. Addled-Ads limped along for a few years, but was put to bed sometime around November 1951.
I like the premise, too bad the gags aren't funny.
These are great! So much funnier than most strips today. And they're well drawn.
Looking for some more, I found that it was syndicated as well by the Chicago Sun and Times Co. I found at least one (with hyphen) on Oct 24 1949 in the Moberly Monitor-Index.
And more in the Gridgeport Telegram. The scope of the jokes seems hindered by the fcat they are using real ads.
Moberly has the first one as well, oct 3, 1949: "For Sale – A fine large dog. Will eat anything. Is very fond of children."