If it's Japanese, it must be.... 
A doll!...  Tea!... A good cigar!.... Tropical candy!..... Artistic!.... Hygenic!.... Sweet-smelling! ...Tough and brave!.... Mechanically efficient!... A doll!

Here are some advertising items that use the word Jap and/or various concepts of Japanese-ness to sell products. On another page I have gathered advertising that shows Japanese dolls in a more purely Western context. Soap was such an important "Japanese" item that I have given it another page.

Click on an image to see the full item.

Advertising card, 1890s?, US 
Great American Tea Company 
Shows the company's building on the other side.
The Japanese green tea was not as popular as Chinese or Indian types. However, the Japanese tea ceremony was famous and so there was a strong association between the best tea and Japan.

This gigantic die-cut card (12" tall) was also used to advertise Sam the Hatter of Jackson, Mississippi. There was no cultural association between the Japanese and hats.

Advertising, TC, 189-?, US 

E. A. Parsons with D. H. Houghtaling Co. Tea,, N.Y. 

Oriental boy with two puppets, basically dolls on strings. 

This is one of a series of brightly colored trade cards of children in Japanese dress (girls with fans, boys with frogs, etc.) used by many companies. In this case, of course, it is particularly appropriate for tea, a Japanese export.

Titled "My Jap Dolly" One of a set of bags with dolls printed on both side. 
Doll looks like a European "oriental" doll. Other side has Breton-looking "Little Love." 

I have also seen these dolls bound as a cloth book.

Flowers and Japs, Japs and Flowers 
One sees here and there 
But Swifts Premium Butterine 
Is seen everywhere. 

Yours truly,  Yosan

Little Jap Union-Made Cigars, Operas, Geo. Eichenhour, Muscatine Iowa 
Images of oriental juggler, butterfly, mask, rising-sun flag. 

The acrobat is one of the earliest stereotypical images of the Japanese. The  hairstyle and clothing depicted here look like a mix of Japanese and Chinese but are probably authentic representations of Japanese entertainers' costumes.

The Japanese fondness for tobacco was well-known from travellers' stories. Though it was not an export from Japan (like tea and silk) it was nevertheless strongly associated with Japan.

Note: there was also a brand of cigars called Jap Rose; some Jap Rose boxes also had a Chinese-looking man , while others had a lovely Japanese woman.

Other brands, with Japanese women  on the boxes, included Geisha and Madame Butterfly cigars. 

Jap Cocoanut Candy 

Thanks to Tony Boyle, whose grandfather made Jap Nuggets in the 1920s, for the information that "jap" was a term for a type of coconut. It's not clear where the term came from, but it was widely recognized by confectioners and candy manufacturers as the correct short term to indicate that coconut was a principal ingredient. A coconut candy is still being made in Britain called "jap desserts."

1. Broken wooden box, 1906 or later, US 

Elmer's Jap Variety Bars made with Fresh cocoanuts, mfg. Miller-Elmer under Food & drugs act 1906.

2. Tradecard, 1890s? US
List of flavors on back; on front, pic, of Florida Alligator eating "our artist." 

3. Boyle's Jap Nuggets tin "est. 1822"", British
Made of cocoanut, cream, honey, and malt.
Note the cartoon image, with a "British explorer" type offering  Boyle's boxes to exotic "African" types (or are they modelled on South Seas natives?) who offer cocoanuts in return.  There is no reference to Japanese imagery.
 

1. Advertising pamphlet, 190-, US  (below)

Glidden Varnish co, Jap-a-Lac paint chips. Includes advice on refinishing carriage frames & refrigerators. Cover image of dancing geisha and 2 banjo (well, maybe samisen) players. 

Japanese lacquer was a famous export product. Jap-a-Lac remained clear about the meaning of the "Jap" in the product name: Japanese. This is a durable, shiny (like lacquer) but easily  applied paint for domestic uses; women are encouraged to use it, and the images of Japanese "girls" with paintbrushes reinforce that idea.

2. Japanese girl (or doll?) and flag 
Advertisement, 1910

The sunburst flag used as a background emphasizes the admiration for Japan's military and imperial glory. Note that the label on the can shows Japanese women, reinforcing the Japanese-ness of the paint. 
 

3. "The Little Glidden Jap-a-Lac Girl"
Advertisement, Good Housekeeping, Feb. 1921

The girl with the paintbrush in the previous ad is now painting Western-style furniture. The cartoon of the girl is rather strange, but her childlike qualities suggest that anybody at all can do this. The yellow disk behind her recalls the Japanese flag, but not quite as strongly as the sunburst in the 1910 ad. The paint can has lost the explicitly Japanese references.
 

As with Jap-a-lac, this product presents itself as artistically satisfying but also easy to use, a paint for household use by women as well as men. Gold paint is of course likely to be decorative; and it is particularly Japanese in that Japanese lacquerware is usually decorated with gold.

(click for an alternative image).

Other Japanese coloring products included Japanese Watercolors (I think this was the early term for a child's watercolor set), and Japan blacking (below) .

"Old Japan" had long referred to collectible Japanese lacquer pieces (brought to Europe in the 16-17th century), and perhaps the term "Japan Blacking" derived from the black ground color of most lacquer. Here, though, the new waterproof boot-blacking enters into a pun on the contemporary Victorian fad for Japanese artifacts, such as lacquer trays. Tray was a common name for a dog, much as we think of Rex or Rover nowadays.

1. Soap dish advertising premium, US  (click to see)
  Jap Amonia Dry Cleans Everything metal soap dish with holes to drain soap. Have seen similar Jap Amonia (always spelled that way) metal items.
2. Trade postcard
     The girls doing the doll wash do not have Japanese dolls, but the picture of the Jap Amonia can shows a Japanese woman proclaiming its efficacy.

Another "Japanese" household cleaner was called "Japo" and featured a cartoonish Japanese boy on the can.

Advertising container, , US Jap Tooth Silk Dental Floss, Bauer and Black, Chicago, New York, Toronto. Not sure whether the Jap connection is silk, hygeine,or both.

(full image shown)

1903, US 
Container shows a mother with her baby boy, who is holding a doll. 

There was also a Jap Rose talc, Babcock's Corylopsis of Japan talc, Jergens Oriental talc, and other brands which used images of Japanese women on the containers. 

Advertisement, Cosmopolitan (London), 1895

Another example, though without a doll, of the theme of Japan as the land of delightful odors. The image of two high-ranking courtesans, imitating  or plagiarizing authentic woodblock prints, suggests a high degree of sophistication in the target market.
Perfumes such as Florida Water also depicted Japanese women, often more naturalalistically and in natural settings, in advertising.

Advertising TC, 1874 or after 
J. A. Pozzoni's Complexion Powder JAP; St. Louis 
Verso has Victorian children with bunny & giant egg. 
No overt reference to Japan, but presumably the company liked the connection between JAP and the idea of a beautiful skin.

Like tea, rice had and has strong Japanese associations. This is one of several rice-related ads showing Japanese children or families. Japan itself is not mentioned, but the a copy tells us that the  "dainty lightness, delicate flavor, and delicious crispness [will] make you marvel at the ingenuity that has transformed common rice..." and praises the cereal as one of the "Delights of Happy Childhood." All this fits with the image of the Japanese, known for their daintiness and their ingenuity. Note, however, the contrast with the next item!

Shredded Wheat advertisement, mag. unknown, 1905 (est. from Portsmouth treaty), US 

A modern Japanese soldier, and in the background a Japanese artist in traditional kimono, representing "the triumph of cereal foods in the development of an industrious race." "The Jap lives on cereal and dried fish" and his army biscuit is 3/4 wheat (!), or so we are told. This image of the Japanese became important right after the Russo-Japanese War, though advertisers may still have wanted to remind consumers that the Japanese were above all "little" and "clever" (as in the Quaker Rice ad just above).

1905 or after, US 

Little Jap Ciagrettes One Cent 

Image of a Japanese soldier with gun in modern uniform.

(full image shown)

Advertisement, magazine, ca. 1910, US 

Cincinnati Screen Company Jap Kitchen Cabinet. No reference to Japan. The name may be meant to evoke cleanliness, neatness, or efficiency.

before 1912 (death of the Meiji emperor), US 

Emperor Meiji and a typing Japanese woman with elaborate hairstyle. 

Some typewriter ribbons came in tins enameled with  Japanese motifs, perhaps because they were made of silk. For example, there was a . "Madame Butterfly" brand with a picture of the lady on the cover.

Advertising premium, 1909, US Bissell Carpet Sweeper 
Shows geisha using carpet sweepers. Evidently it was a sales-incentive premium.

The woman is Western but the effect is certainly "geisha."
This may be an evocation of the opera Madame Butterfly, which appears in another phonograph ad: sound so real you'll feel as if you were living the story?

There was a Geisha brand of phonograph needles.

Two tradecards 1910?, US 

Two cards showing Chinese and Japanese families at home using sewing machines. Part of a series. Singer used other images of Japanese women using sewing machines.

This ad is unusual in showing a Japanese man--and a very large and vigorous one, striding imperiously over the globe, with the rays of the Japanese battle flag behind him (compare the 1910 Jap-a-lac ad above). This image of Japan was probably permissible in 1917 because Japan had joined the  U.S. in World War I.

This advertisement for an importer of Japanese goods in New York city includes a picture of the shop window, in which can be seen vases, a garment and a tapestry, and a doll.

There is also a little essay which is my attempt to summarize 
why "Jap" was a positive quality.