[DanBC]

I'm interested to know whether this is a collective false memory, like Berenstein Bears, or if it's true and misattributed.

That web page starts when a bunch of stuff wasn't available in digital form (people speak about scanning microfiche) so maybe they're all just looking in the wrong places.

There's probably some distributed historian project waiting to happen - OCRing and proof-reading all the ads in all the newspapers, and then mining that data.