The parents could therefore not resist their children’s growing urge to collect for long, so that they were unnoticed forced to increase the consumption of the meat extract and thus laid the foundations for a loyal bond with the product in question. In the early days, the advertising message on these prints remained of great importance. The obverse usually bore the text “Véritable Extrait de Viande Liebig”, next to the image of the typical earthenware pot in which the meat extract was sold for many years. Later this pot was given a less prominent place in the edge of the chromos, to be replaced from 1931 in one of the lower corners by the signature of Justus von Liebig.
After the First World War, the chromos could be acquired in series of 6 or 12 prints. A series was obtained in exchange for a fixed amount of coupons. From then on, the series were divided into the so-called exchange centers.
The advertising chromos were published from about 1850 to 1914. Afterwards, more traditional printing techniques were used to print the prints. However, there are still chromos up to 1935.
Initially the prints were offered by the shopkeepers to their customers when they bought certain products. The manufacturers ordered these prints from a number of lithographic printers, who may have the name of the product printed on them. These prints were then distributed through retailers, who often stamped their names and addresses on the reverse side. In this way, various manufacturers and retailers sometimes distributed the same prints. These loose, illustrated advertising cards, bearing the company’s address, were replaced after 1882 by prints that together formed a series.