Ad Mats from Kenner (1979)

Before the advent of digital publishing, toy companies like Kenner typically produced ad mats for retailers to use to advertise their product lines. Each ad mat contained illustrated versions in various sizes of the company’s toys, to be used in print media such as newspapers and magazines.

Depending on the size of the retailer, either an in-house art department or external service bureau would manually assemble its ads using the reproducible art, mixing and matching products for sale at their location from a variety of different toy vendors.