It used to be that when you were in the mood for an all-day sucker, you had a choice to make. Sugar Daddy? Black Cow? Slo Poke?
Decisions, decisions . . .
As I recall, Slo Poke was the direct equal of the Sugar Daddy, the Black Cow being, basically, a Slo-Poke dipped in chocolate. I don’t mind telling you, it wasn’t much of a competition for me. I must have eaten at least a thousand Black Cows in the 60’s.
Holloway was the maker of Slo Pokes and Black Cows. I seem to remember a Pink Cow, too, but couldn’t tell you what it was. Maybe someone out there can?
Anyhow, the original companies got swallowed up by bigger boys, and eventually Clark ended up with the Holloway all-day suckers. In 1998, they discontinued the production of the long-lasting caramel goodies.
Sugar Daddy is now owned by Tootsie Roll, and yes, they’re still around. So even though Black Cow won the battle in the 60’s, as far as I’m concerned, Sugar Daddy won the war.
It’s possible that no other generation will be as enamored of the space program as were youthful Baby Boomers. Perhaps a manned mission to Mars might capture the imagination of the young as we were swept up by the race to the moon in the 1960’s. But then again it might not.
In our youth, the idea of man traveling to space and back was so new, so outrageous, and so compelling that it simply obsessed us.
In such a fertile environment, advertisers began selling us the same foods that astronauts consumed in space.
Now, the truth be known, no doubt the fellows with The Right Stuff would have preferred fresh-squeezed orange juice, fresh country ham and eggs, and similar fare. But instead, they had to make do with very artificial alternatives, that blasted lack of gravity the culprit.
So they were all probably amused at how the public scarfed up Space Food Sticks.
Space Food Sticks, manufactured by Pillsbury, were the public’s equivalent of the semi-dehydrated, compressed rations that astronauts choked down to keep from starving. Presumably, by the time they were offered up for sale, they were more palatable than their original early incarnations. They DID represent an improvement over the yucky stuff astronauts had to suck out of tubes like toothpaste.
If it was up to our moms, they probably wouldn’t have sold very well. But Pillsbury knew what they were doing when they advertised them heavily on Saturday mornings. They knew that youthful demographic would begin hounding their parents to purchase the semi-tasty sticks.
That’s one thing for sure. Nobody bought them for their fresh flavor. 😉
It was a blast to grab a couple of sticks, put on your space helmet (mine doubled as a football helmet), and take imaginary space walks, so you could enjoy your Space Food Stick while watching the imaginary earth spin below you.
In 1966, when you were on a two-nickel-a-day budget, you had to be careful what you spent your money on.
Your soft drink options were these: Coke, Pepsi, 7up, RC Cola, Dr. Pepper, Fanta, Nehi, Grapette, or Orange Crush. These were all available for a dime. In other words, your ENTIRE BANKROLL.
But there was another option: Shasta. And it only cost a nickel.
At Moonwink Grocery, the ten cent pops were ice cold. But the more budget-friendly Shastas were located on an upper shelf in the far left side of the store. In other words, there were sold at room temperature.
But we didn’t care. In fact, we would often prepare the afternoon’s purchase by taking a couple of cans and stashing them in the dairy case out of sight, to be refreshingly cold by the time we ventured in around 2:00 PM. Mark, the store owner, was very tolerant of our sidestepping of his pop sales procedure.
My guess is that his hands were tied. The Big Boys in the soft drink game had probably forbidden him from selling budget Shasta cold alongside their products.
Shasta pop has a genuine connection to California’s Mount Shasta. They once marketed spring water from that location. The brand has been bought and sold repeatedly since being initially obtained by Sara Lee about the time I was buying it in the 60’s. It peaked in the 80’s, when those “I wanna pop” commercials were on.
Shasta’s greatest commercials, IMHO, were in the 70’s. They had immaculately animated ads with a brass band playing the familiar “Shasta! It has’ta be Shasta!” song in the background.
So here’s to a great tasting soda that was easy on a six-year-old kid’s budget.
One of the catchiest commercial jingles around was the above refrain.
Milk Shake was a Borden’s product. There seemed to be a brief craze in the mid-to-late 60’s of selling canned milk shakes. A rival brand was Great Shakes, which also had a killer jingle.
Anyhow, this song stuck in my head as a kid, and I can recall most of the lyrics:
Shake open and pour, a milk shake!
Shake open and pour, a milk shake!
(Something something), in a can
(Something else), it’s crazy man!
No fountain drink is better than
At this point a kid would screw up his line and blurt out er, shake open and pour!
One of the most sacred rituals that I recall from my childhood was that of getting into the car and driving, sometimes over an hour, to a favorite restaurant. The delicious saturated-fat laden food was a particular delight to my parents, who could remember the very lean times of the Great Depression.
So perhaps once a month, we would pile into the Plymouth and head for locations like Chicken Annie’s, or Wilder’s, or the AQ Chicken House.
All three of these fine eateries are still around, I’m happy to say. Perhaps they have altered their menus to provide more health-conscious options, perhaps not. But they are still plugging away, providing unique cuisine that flies in the face of the plethora of generic chains that have become a part of our lives. And Boomers, that should make you smile. After all, if I can quickly come up with three examples of local eateries that have survived since the 60’s, I’ll bet you can too.
Wilder’s Steak House, Joplin, Missouri
Now I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with chains like Applebee’s, Red Lobster, Olive Garden, or Shogun. Indeed, there is much to love about the sameness and predictability of the franchise restaurant, especially when you are on the road and hungry.
But the unique eating places of our youth were very much savored by our parents, who faithfully returned again and again, sometimes driving an hour or more to get there. After all, they found out by trial and error that they were worth visiting. Perhaps the grapevine at work or at the beauty shop revealed that there was a place in Springdale, Arkansas, accessible only by narrow, curvy Arkansas roads, that served the best fried chicken this side of Alabama.
At any rate, our parents loved their favorite restaurants. And we kids loved it when they would take us along. This was a special treat for me, because it was much more common for them to leave me home on Saturday nights in the care of my older brother while they headed off to Joplin, thirty miles away, to feast at Wilder’s.
I also recall nice-looking eating spots that my parents avoided like the plague. Why was that? Was the food questionable? Was the staff less than pleasant? Was the atmosphere wrong?
Postcard adverting the A.Q. Chicken House
I doubt that the latter was the case, because many of the often-visited places featured undecorated white walls, or ugly faded art prints of cowboy scenes, or water-stained ceilings. Clearly, chic ambiance was NOT the thing that drew my parents back again and again..
I recall pulling into the AQ Chicken House driveway about 1967 and seeing a dilapidated-looking building, with old barn wood everywhere. But there was also hardly a place to park. My parents would feast on the chicken, but my favorite was the batter-dipped french fries. Oh, the decadent delight!
Chicken Annie’s was another humble-looking spot, a half-hour drive from home. Sitting out in the middle of nowhere, it too drew a crowd of commuters who couldn’t care less about atmosphere, and who found its food too good to resist.
Wilder’s in Joplin was founded in the year that the stock market crashed, and has managed to survive lots of economic ups and downs since then. Sadly, such was not the case with Mickey Mantle’s Steakhouse (although the late Mick still has his name on a trendy New York eatery) and Rafters, which featured a huge fire-breathing dragon sign. I was completely spellbound as that neon-lit beast would spew out flames from its mouth every minute or so, illuminating the black Joplin Saturday night and burning itself indelibly into the memory banks of a rapt seven-year-old.
How about you? What favorite eating spots of your childhood are still around? Here’s hoping you can still visit your own personal equivalent of Chicken Annie’s, Wilder’s, or the AQ Chicken House.
We grew up listening to the early morning gurgling sounds of the percolator. Even though we were probably too young to enjoy its taste, the coffee smell and the calming sound made for great kitchen ambiance.
But all of that changed in 1972.
That year, Vincent Marotta released his invention for sale to the general public: Mr. Coffee.
With the help of one of baseball’s greatest players, it revolutionized the way we prepared the essential get-going beverage. Within a few short years, the percolator was nearly extinct.
Our parents drank percolated coffee and were used to it, but the percolation process has issues.
The same water is continuously pumped over the grounds over and over. This is simply not good coffee making form. Plus, the brewed coffee is subjected to 212 degree heat, and that’s bad for flavor. However, it did make for one catchy TV commercial!
Marotta knew that Joe DiMaggio was a noted coffee drinker. But he was also pretty reclusive. Joltin’ Joe had gotten all of the fame that he wanted playing baseball and from his short marriage to Marilyn Monroe. In 1972, he was enjoying retired life in San Francisco.
This NPR interview gives the details on how Joe was convinced to become the spokesman for Mr. Coffee. Basically, it took Marotta tracking down his phone number, then flying from Cleveland to the west coast the next day. The relationship between DiMaggio and Mr. Coffee lasted nearly 15 years.
In researching this piece, I was surprised to learn that coffee filters were not sold until 1975. I assume that a perforated basket was used on models prior to then. Personally, I prefer a mesh basket anyway. It lets just a bit of sediment through, a delicious enhancement to taste.
By the end of the decade, practically every kitchen in America had a Mr. Coffee or one of its imitators. The percolator was hopelessly old-fashioned. Vince Marotta and Joe Dimaggio had managed to change the way we drank coffee.
Nowadays, the percolator is enjoying a bit of a nostalgic comeback. Of course, it never fell out of favor with sportsmen and campers, as you could make coffee on a campfire, no electricity required. The classic percolator requires a coarser size grind, not so easy to find any more.
But give me my Mr. Coffee-brewed morning start to my day. I can’t imagine penning a column without it.
I grew up in a two-income household long before it was fashionable. My father owned a truck garage in Miami, Oklahoma, and my mom was a first-grade teacher. That meant times were busy around my house, and a kid frequently was expected to fend for himself, lunch-wise.
No problem. The good folks at Campbell’s Soup took care of that. A good-faith estimate is that I have eaten 3,744 cans of Campbell’s Soup over the years. That’s averaging about a can and a half per week. If anything, that figure is low. In fact, in my cubicle at work, I have four cans of Chunky stashed away (along with fat-free saltines, of course, more on that later) for those days when I really don’t want to go out and blow ten bucks on lunch.
Making Campbell’s vegetable soup (my childhood favorite, LOVED those alphabet characters!) was a snap for a seven-year-old. Just open the can, mix up a can of water, and heat until just hot enough. Mmm, mmm, good!
Campbell’s Soup got its start back in 1894. A man named John Dorrance was hired by his uncle, the company president (then Anderson & Campbell Preserve Company), for a salary of $7.50 a week. While that may have been good pay for a laborer, Dorrance had a chemistry degree from MIT and a Ph.D. from the University of Gottengen in Germany. But he took the meager wages in order to work for his uncle.
It turned out to be a very good move for the Campbell’s company.
Canned soup was very popular in Europe, as the younger Dorrance was aware. And it was inexpensive to manufacture. However, it was mostly water, and therefore expensive to ship. So Dorrance set to work to see about removing some of that weight. He eventually developed a technique to remove half of the water, lightening the canned soup’s weight considerable, and making its preparation a simple matter of pouring the can into a pan and adding one more can of water.
Suddenly, sales of soup to Americans was feasible. And as Campbell’s began marketing it, sales skyrocketed. At ten cents a can, consumers loved it. By 1922 Campbell’s added the word “Soup” to their name. And hopefully, Dorrance received lots of very nice raises.
So kids of many generations grew up with the tasty stuff. By the Jet Age, parents on the go loved quick, easy lunches that their kids willingly devoured. And tons of TV and magazine advertising ensured that every cupboard in America was supplied with a generous amount of Campbell’s Vegetable, Chicken Noodle, and Tomato Soups. At least ours was.
Andy Warhol’s Soup Can Painting
Pop artist extraordinaire Andy Warhol saw that Campbell’s Soup had become a part of American culture, so he began producing paintings that incorporated it. And they, like campbell’s Soup itself, were also huge sellers.
Campbell’s Soup was simply something that I never got tired of. As I grew older, I learned to spice it up a bit. A little hot sauce goes a long way towards waking up subtle flavors in chicken noodle and tomato soup. And a pinch of curry powder is great in the chicken noodle variety as well.
Then there are the crackers. I’m a cracker smasher, I’m a bit abashed to say. My idea of a perfect serving of Campbell’s Vegetable Beef is to heat it to near boiling, then pour it in a bowl big enough for the entire amount (or simply eat it out of the pot if I’m sitting in front of my home computer) and crush an entire sleeve of fat-free Premium Saltines into the hot mixture, then stir to form a cracker/soup colloid, of sorts.
Strange, I know, but you know what? It’s mmm, mmm, good!
Nowadays, you can’t throw a rock without hitting a McDonald’s. There’s probably not a town in America with 5000 or more residents that doesn’t have one.
But they were much less commonplace when we grew up. You might have had to drive a hundred miles to find one.
The original McDonald’s drive-ins were easy to recognize. They had those amazing Golden Arches that you could spot a mile away. And they also proudly proclaimed how many hamburgers they had foisted upon the hungry public to that point.
Maybe you remember the scene from Woody Allen’s classic flick Sleeper, when he awoke in the future and saw a McDonald’s that stated that it had sold 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 hamburgers.
Anyhow, McDonald’s did some serious expansion under Ray Kroc, who bought the chain of four southern California restaurants from brothers Dick and Mac McDonald in 1954.
By 1977, they finally made it to nearby Rogers, Arkansas. I must have eaten a couple hundred Quarter Pounders there as a teenager.
The oldest McDonald’s is in Downey, California. It opened in 1953, and I am proud to say that I have eaten there.
It was a real trip back in time to sit at the outdoor table and stare at those beautiful arches. The restaurant was locked in time, with the original sign, decorations, and everything (except the prices).
But the franchise had changed by the 70’s, then an indoor eating facility. I rarely go there nowadays, having adopted a low-fat diet which in direct contrast with the McDonald’s menu. But I have fond memories of when the big yellow M finally showed up in my neighborhood.
Though I was ravenous about candy, it wasn’t unusual for me to barely touch my breakfast, lunch, or dinner.
It was a constant worry for my mother, who was assured by wise Dr. Wendleton to not worry, he’ll eat when he’s hungry.
One of the treats that would wake up my taste buds was a steaming bowl of Malt-O-Meal, complete with milk and, of course, sugar. I also enjoyed Cream of Wheat, and honestly couldn’t tell the difference between the two competitors.
Malt-O-Meal got its start in 1919. That year, the Campbell Cereal Company was founded by by John Campbell, a miller in Owatonna, Minnesota. He invented a hot breakfast cereal which consisted of a combination of malted and farina wheat. He called it Malt-O-Meal. Campbell intended to compete with Cream of Wheat, which had gotten its start in the 1890’s.
Malt-O-Meal was a hit. It sold competitively alongside Cream of Wheat, and both brands did a brisk business.
And, as I mentioned before, whichever one my mom served didn’t matter much to me. I assume she bought one brand over another based on current sales prices.
However, I have a softer spot in my heart for Malt-O-Meal. That’s because the company which produces it, officially known as Malt-O-Meal, continues to exist in its privately owned state today, through the Great Depression, 1970’s stagflation, and a recent salmonella recall (every food manufacturer’s worst nightmare).
50’s era Cream of Wheat box
I too work for a family-owned business, one that has been around since the 1930’s, and I am familiar with the challenges of remaining independent despite economic upheavals. My hat’s off to Malt-O-Meal for surviving.
The aroma of either cereal cooking on a cold winter morning helped drag my sleepy bones out of bed to face another drudgerous day at school. No matter how hungry I was (or wasn’t), I could always make a bowl of the curiously warm-on-the-bottom, cold-on-the-top milk-drenched concoction disappear.
I can’t remember any Malt-O-Meal commercials from my childhood, though there must have been dozens of different ones. I do recall a Cream of Wheat jingle, and one brand or the other made a TV ad about a woman living in International Falls, Minnesota, and how she enticed her kid to go to school in the subzero temperatures by serving him hot cereal.
Cream of Wheat has a spokesman, Rastus the chef, who was once presented in a very politically incorrect manner. The stereotypical figure, common among food manufacturers of the early-to-mid twentieth century, would promote the cereal with Stepin Fetchit type dialog.
As racial equality came to the forefront, Rastus, like Aunt Jemima and Uncle Ben, was either silent, or spoke dignified English. The chef’s name is still Rastus, but only because he was never renamed. His name hasn’t been featured in an advertisement since before most of us were born.
I don’t have time for breakfast any more. I’m out of bed and on the road to work by 4:00 AM. But I did enjoy the sweet aroma of Malt-O-Meal and Cream of Wheat when my wife would prepare it for our kids when they were small. May that aroma always exist somewhere in the world.
Man has been eating lunch since time immemorial. And you might think that the portable lunchbox like you carried to school in the 50’s, 60’s, or 70’s would have been just as ancient. But you would be wrong.
In 1950, Nashville, TN-based Alladin came up with a concept that they felt just might have potential, especially in light of the fact that the largest generation of six-year-olds in history were about to enter school for the first time: a metal box/vacuum bottle combination just the right size for a kid to carry his/her lunch to school in. And seeing how metal lasted forever, and a steady supply of new customers was needed in order to do future business, what if they put a TV character’s image on the box and bottle? That way, new TV shows would create demand for new lunch boxes!
I couldn’t find any names connected with that idea, but rest assured, even Don Draper has never possessed that kind of genius.
Those original Hopalong Cassidy lunchboxes were an immediate smash success, and a tradition was born for not just Boomers, but all kids of the 20th century: a perfect-sized case that a kid would proudly lug to school and back, festooned with colorful pictures.
The metal lunch box for kids was actually born in 1935, a company called Geuder, Paeschke and Frey creating a lithographed box with Mickey mouse’s image on it. But it took postwar prosperity, TV, and the addition of a Thermos bottle for the concept to become a craze.
OK, not an actual “Thermos” bottle, but that’s what the ubiquitous containers have come to be generically called. In fact, it was Thermos who decided to jump into the lunchbox fray in 1953 with their own Roy Rogers version. And it, too, was a staggering success, the kid-sized lunchbox kit increasing the company’s overall sales revenue by 20% that year.
1968 Star Trek lunchbox
The companies didn’t waste any time getting more TV and movie characters onto the store shelves. And more manufacturers jumped into the lucrative market. By the late 50’s, there were ten or so different brands of lunch boxes. One of these was Ohio Art, who used lunchbox profits to develop a new toy: the Etch-a-Sketch. I am astounded to realize that I have not yet written a piece on the artistic toy, stand by for that one.
It was brilliance beyond brilliance. Besides filling a utilititarian need, new TV shows came out every fall, so there would be a continuing demand for more and more lunchboxes. Life was good.
The thing is that they were built to last forever. The quality of the metal kept getting better and better. By 1962, designs were embossed onto the boxes, replacing the flat graphics. The Thermos bottles didn’t fare so well, though. The first thing to go was the plastic cap, frequently left on the table in the cafeteria. Next, the bottle itself would fall victim to gravity, and dropping a loaded box might cause the bottle’s glass liner to shatter. However, the box itself would soldier on, eventually being sold at a yard sale, or perhaps being tossed into an attic, to be rediscovered and put on eBay in the next century
007 lunch box
An alternative to the rectangular models came along a bit later. It mimicked the classic lunchboxes that our fathers lugged to work twenty years earlier. The kid’s model originated, once again, with Aladdin, in 1957. It was expensive paying for the rights to use TV and movie characters, so Alladin decided to make miniature versions of the blue-collar’s model, decorated with more generic (and cheaper) graphics. A Disney schoolbus model was the single largest-selling lunchbox of all time, some nine million units! Other dome-tops bore the likenesses of VW buses. Additionally, many were decorated with pirates, spaceships, cowboys, and other inexpensive kid magnets.
Lunchboxes reigned supreme throughout the 60’s. The glass vacuum bottle was replaced during that decade with a plastic foam-insulated version that was more durable. But that was the last plastic improvement.
As the 70’s started rolling along, overprotective mothers became concerned that their kids were carrying potential weapons to school. Lawsuits began to be filed, wussy legislators jumped on the bandwagon of the dangers of evil metal, and the manufacturers began feeling the heat. Starting in 1972, plastic and vinyl lunchboxes became the norm, and they were, in a word, crap.
The plastic would fade and crack, the vinyl would tear, but oh, how lucky we were to be protected from that vile steel. The popularity of the school lunchbox began to fade.
Alladin continued to make a limited amount of metal boxes, the last one celebrating Rambo in 1985. In 1998, they got out of the lunchbox business altogether. Thermos continues to make them, though, even metal ones! However, they must be careful marketing them, because obviously, one of the most horrible hazards a kid can face is being plunked in the head by a fellow student possessing that most heinous weapon of mass destruction, the metal lunch box.
