Category: Food and Drink

“Candy coated popcorn, peanuts and a prize! That’s what you get with Cracker Jack!”

If you remember JFK, you also remember actor Jack Gilford and his immortal Cracker Jack commercials of the 60’s. Click on the movie for one of my favorites, involving a kid who’s just a bit short on cash.

Cracker Jack is one of those memories that our grandparents actually remembered from THEIR childhoods. The song “Take Me out to the Ballgame” was written in 1908, fifteen years after F.W. Rueckheim introduced a unique popcorn, peanuts and molasses confection at the Chicago World’s Fair.

Cracker Jack was an instant hit. It has truly become a part of our culture. But we Boomer kids have our own memories. Many of them involve those Jack Gilford commercials.

One of my favorites was the one where Jack was dressed up like a witch, along with some other actors. They are adding ingredients to a boiling cauldron. One of them adds a “purple flurp.” Then Jack adds the piece de resistance: a large, one-eyed, no-nosed nothing. The cauldron then explodes.

Cracker Jack was simply irresistible to a kid. Not only was it delicious to eat, but it came with a prize! I remember getting lots of puzzles that had tiny metal balls under a plastic cap and that required you to roll them into holes. Little clip-on plastic badges were common, as were semicircular thin plastic whistles that required dexterity beyond what seven-year-old me possessed. You put the whole thing in your mouth and somehow blew against the plastic to make a shrill whistle.

Anticipation could be summed up in that feeling when you fished through the caramel-coated peanuts and popcorn and found that little paper-wrapped delight.

Of course, the candy itself was delicious, too. I loved how the heavier peanuts would find their way to the bottom of the box, to be savored at the end.

Cracker Jack cost a dime when most other candy bars cost a nickel. So I didn’t buy too many boxes at Moonwink Grocery. But I went to many high school football and basketball games to watch my older brother play for the Miami Wardogs, and it was a tradition for dad to buy me a box of Cracker Jack each time. We had a circus that regularly came through town in the 60’s, and I recall watching the performers with Cracker Jack crunching in my mouth.

I don’t eat too many sweets any more, but I will treat myself to Cracker Jack every now and then. When I get grandkids, that will make five consecutive generations of my family digging through the candy to get to the hidden prize.

Decisions, decisions. Obviously, white milk was yucky. So how did you go about flavoring it, making it fit for consumption by a seven-year-old?

In the 60’s, there were a number of choices. Some are still around, others have passed along the wayside.

In my home, it was either Nestle’s Quik, or PDQ.

I’m not sure which I preferred. Nestle’s had a very good taste, but PDQ was processed in the form of those cool coarse granules. Plus, the jar had an ultra-modern shape to it.

Interestingly, the modern look still appeals to me. In fact, my wife and myself have spent a good chunk of bucks remodeling our house in a modern look. But I digress.

Anyhow, the other choices to be had in my locale were Hershey’s chocolate syrup (tricky. Too much or too little in the milk was equally distasteful) or Hershey’s cocoa powder (simply not an alternative, IMHO. Not sweet enough).

Folks in the northeast US and areas of the west coastal states could opt for Bosco. I never saw it in Miami, Oklahoma, but it showed up as mentions in TV programs from time to time, and had an unforgettable name.

And there was Ovaltine. Broadway Joe himself hawked it! Sadly, I never tried it. I really don’t know why. Its flavor was described by reader Patrick as being tad salty. It wasn’t unusual to be eaten dry, right out of the jar.

Of course, for those who insisted their milk be flavored, there WAS one other choice.

I hesitate to bring it up at all. I tried it once, circa 1967, and its foul taste still lingers on my tongue.

Of course, I’m speaking of Nestle’s Quik! STRAWBERRY!

It was a bad idea from the word go. Strawberry milk? Obviously, chocolate is the only artificial flavor ever intended to transcend milk to the next level.

Well, unless you count Bailey’s Irish Cream.

Sometimes, the things we enjoyed as kids are shrouded in obscurity. That was the case of today’s subject of Daisys, Bugles, Whistles, Buttons, and Bows.

These are shaped salty snack foods I’m talking about. And I know Daisys is misspelled, but notice that it is in the pictured ad, too.

According to the scant information I could find, Daisys, Bugles, and Whistles first appeared on the general market in 1966. They were produced by General Mills. And Bugles still survives today, but not the others.

It appears that Daisys and Bugles were similarly flavored. The plain-Jane Bugles you can buy today were the original flavor of 1966, salty corn. Daisys were shaped like, well, flowers, duh!, and seemed to be strategically aimed at dippers. Whistles were cheese-flavored. They were just the right size to fit on the ends of a kid’s fingers.

There were two other salty snacks that were around in the early 70’s. They were called Buttons and Bows. The spotty information I could find stated that Buttons were pizza-flavored (and button shaped), and Bows tasted similar to Bugles and Daisys.

For that reason, and because I vividly recall a commercial touting Buttons and Bows (but NOT Daisys, Bugles, or Whistles), I suspect that they were not a General Mills creation, but that of a rival.

And that, friends, is ALL I could find on these snack foods that must have been sold by the train-car load in the late 60’s-early 70’s!

I recall the aforementioned commercial jingle on TV that I could not find on YouTube in this way:

“Go out and get ’em, you’ll never forget ’em. One’s called Buttons and One’s called Bows, they go together like buttons and bows!”

They were right. I never forgot them. It just seems that everyone else in the world has.

Thus ends this frustratingly short I Remember JFK remembrance. Now, readers, it’s time for YOU to fill in the blanks. Perhaps together we can reconstruct the history of these uniquely shaped snacks of our childhoods.

A nickel was a fortune in 1967. You could choose from dozens of confections that virtually assured that you would also have mercury-laden fillings in your teeth by the time you were a teenager.

Oh well. We may have ugly gray dental work, but we also have priceless memories.

Let’s browse through Moonwink Grocery’s candy shelf and see what we can find.

The gum was always near the top. In fact, it still is, in the convenience stores we have today. Hmm. Well, I see Beemans (famous for having pepsin, I guess it helped you digest your food), Black Jack (in case you wanted your gum to taste like licorice), Clove (I always loved that stuff), Fruit Stripe (we loved striped stuff. Remember Stripe toothpaste?), Teaberry (kind of clovish tasting, as I recall), Cinnamint, Chiclets (both standard size, and those irresistible tiny ones), and finally Trident, for those who weren’t keen to the idea of getting cavities.

Nobody I hung out with chewed Trident. It was a dime instead of a nickel, and those who preferred the expensive stuff were not to be trusted.

Also located at the top was the roll candy. These included Certs (forget it, they cost a dime. I guess that Retsyn they put in them must have been expensive) and Life Savers. There were others, too, but I’m having a hard time remembering them.

Moving down, we see the sucker section. Beside the familiar Sugar Daddies, Black Cows, and Slo-Pokes, we have BB Bats (they were only two cents!), Tootsie Pops (also two cent bargains), big grape suckers (they were mega-cool. About every fifth one would have “winner!” printed on it in edible ink. That meant you got another one free!), and for the REALLY budget-conscious, Dum-Dums. They were only a penny.

I loved how Dum-Dums would have offers on the wrappers. You could get stuff like pencil cases, baseball caps, and the like by sending in a wrapper and a buck or two to: DUM-DUM BASEBALL CAP, followed by an address. We always got a kick out of the idea of sending mail to such an addressee.

Ah, the candy bars. Clark bars (a Butterfinger clone), Bit-O-Honeys (those were disgusting to me), Zero bars, Milk Shake bars, Zagnuts, Oh Henry! bars, Butternuts, and my favorite: a bar covered with salted peanuts (no chocolate) called Payday. Obviously, I’m missing many other brands found today, but I’m trying to focus on the lost/obscure stuff (with the exception of my still popular Payday, of course).

Next to the candy bars was the taffy/big sticks of gum section. Laffy Taffy, Abba Zabbas, pink cigars made of gum, Bub’s Daddy, and the no-nonsensically named It’s Great could be found here.

While they weren’t around in the mid 60’s, two other gums from your past deserve mention.One was Love-Its, which came in a little cloth flower-power bag. The other was a cherry gum which came in the form of a rope about 18″ long. Help, anyone, with the name?

Now, the smaller candies that came in paper sacks or cardboard boxes. Sweet-Tarts, Razzles, Bottle Caps (though they might have come along later), Good-N-Plenty (hawked on TV by a little engineer named Charlie), Milk Duds, Junior Mints (Cosmo Kramer pointed out that EVERYBODY loves them), Chuckles (sugar coated jelly. Mmmm), Jujie Fruits (as much fun to pry off your teeth as to eat), Now and Later, candy cigarettes, Charms, Mike & Ike, Red Hots, and Wacky Wafers.

Flavored sugar was a hit with the kids, of course. Pixie Stix (you would bit the end off and pour the delicious tooth-eating-substance into your mouth) and Lik-M-Aid (the sugar came in a bag and was meant to be eaten with an included dipping stick that you would moisten with your saliva. However, the preferred method was to simply pour it in your palm and lick it off. That’s why so many of us ran around with red palms) were side by side on the shelf.

Then there were the wax items. Nik-L-Nips deserve mention. They were little “pop bottles” which contained a syrupy sweet drink. After knocking back your nip, it was time to chew the bottle.

Now the collector cards. Besides the familiar baseball and football cards, there were Wacky Packages, some sort of cards that depicted bizarre cartoon monsters, Mars Attacks! cards (yes, they inspired the movie), and Civil War cards. Additionally, limited runs of cards would be produced for movies and TV series like Hogan’s Heroes, Get Smart!, James Bond, etc.

We now come to candy preferred by grownups. That’s how I remember it, because my mom loved them, but I didn’t generally buy them. The Seven-Up bar (man, I think they were fifteen cents! That was a fortune), Cherry Mashes (great, but they cost a dime), and Peanut Patties (peanuts coated in a sugary solution and dyed dark red. Weird, when you think about it) could be found there.

Down at the bottom shelf were the penny items. Super Bubble, Bazooka, Dubble Bubble, Kits (four little wrapped candies to a package for a penny!), those skinny little Tootsie Rolls, Safe-T-Pops (no stick, they had a thick looped string for a handle), jawbreakers, Jolly Ranchers, and Hot Dog gum (shaped like a frankfurter!) were available for those willing to stoop down to reach them.

As you can see, the bewildering display of tempting treats required much time to assimilate. You might take fifteen minutes to figure out what you could buy with that nickel.

We don’t have that problem any more. It doesn’t take long to figure out that a nickel won’t buy anything.

When I would accompany my mom to Farrier’s IGA store for the weekly purchase of groceries, I would spend a long time at the cereal aisle. Eventually I would select a box of sugar-sweetened goodness and present it for her approval.

“You just want this one because of the toy inside!”

How could she say such a thing? I mean, of course, it was TRUE, but still…

Indeed, sometimes I would select a cereal whose flavor didn’t really ring my bell for the prize inside. I remember selecting a box of Sugar Crisp once whose back featured a cutout record covered with images of Sugar Bear, Shoobee Bear, and Doobee Bear (snicker, snicker! Those clueless cereal execs at it again!). I just had to have that record, even though the cereal itself was awful (to this kid, obviously millions disagree).

Anyhow, many was the time I proved my mom right by getting home, tearing into the box, fishing out the toy, and barely touching the remaining cereal. Fortunately, due to the presence of the venerable calcium disodium EDTA, it could sit for months in the cabinet perfectly preserved.

Thus, I would be frequently forbidden to get cereal with toys. But even then, there were often times goodies on the back.

Games, collector’s cards, the aforementioned records, and cutouts meant to be constructed into cardboard toys frequently graced the backs of the boxes.

That meant that you didn’t get the prize until you finished the contents. Mom LOVED that!

There were two types of cereal: plain old, and with fruit!

A cut-up banana could transform the most mundane bowl of soggy cereal into a fruity delight, savored until the final slice was fished out of the milk.

I remember hearing on a 1970’s radio talk show that a cereal manufacturer put dried banana chips in with the product to become reanimated in the milk, but that it had to be pulled because “hippies” were smoking the banana chips as an alternative to marijuana. True or not (probably not), it was a short-lived experiment which has recently been resurrected by Kellogg’s Corn Flakes! Presumably, today’s hippies are better behaved?

A bit of marketing genius by the cereal manufacturers was the production of miniature boxes that were packaged in multi-packs.

The upside: no matter what cereal you liked, it was in there. The downside: no matter what cereal you hated, it was also in there. Another downside was that nary a toy was found inside, although the cardboard wrapping might contain games or puzzles.

The boxes could be sliced open and made into miniature bowls into which you poured the milk. Occasionally, feeling adventuresome, I would do so, usually making a mess that mom had to clean up. What patience that woman had!

The miniature boxes were (and still are) sold to restaurants, but kids were attracted to them as well. We liked kid-sized versions of products.

It’s been years since I had cereal and milk. The rare occasions that I partake in a traditional breakfast, it’s more likely to be a saturated-fat-and-cholesterol-laden bacon and eggs affair. It’s fortunate for me indeed that breakfasts are rare.

Nonetheless, here’s a tip of the hat to Kellogg’s, Post, Quaker, General Mills, and Nabisco, who helped get our sleepy bodies up and at ’em for school so long ago.

I wonder if any Boomer kid in the US ever grew up without breakfast cereal in the morning? Sure, some days we would be treated with Cream of Wheat, Malt-O-Meal, or perhaps full-blown bacon and eggs, but by and large mornings were busy times for families. This was particularly true in the case of my own dual-income household. Dad would be getting ready for another day at his truck garage, and mom would likewise be preparing for her own vocation of teaching a first grade class at Wilson Elementary, on the other side of town from my own alma mater of Nichols.

Needless to say, cooking breakfast was a difficult venture. So most mornings, it was one of a bevy of cartoon characters who provided me with the essential sugar that a kid used to get going in the early hours.

These friendly faces included So-Hi (I’ll bet the clueless execs who named the stereotypical Chinese Rice Crinkles pitchman were the butt of many jokes among the younger staffmembers at Post over that moniker), Tony the Tiger, Capn’ Crunch, King Vitaman, The Kellog’s Corn Flakes rooster, the Blue Gnu, and the very weird Apple Jacks apple face.

I loved Rice Krinkles, but was also quite partial to Alpha-Bits, particularly in the postman/Lovable Truly era.

Alpha-Bits had a variety of mascots, including inanimate blocks, a big smiley-faced kid, and blowups of the cereal letters themselves. But it was the postman who caught my seven-year-old eye during a commercial break while watching Mighty Mouse one Saturday morning. I was struck with a craving for letters made of wheat, oats, and sugar. It was one of mom’s most regular purchases afterwards.

The postman was such a hit that he soon received a name, Lovable Truly, and his own spot on the Linus the Lion Hearted show.

Alpha-Bits cereal was perfect. You see, the perfect breakfast cereal not only tasted good in a bowlful of milk, but also was a delight to the senses when eaten right out of the box while planted in front of the one-eyed-monster after school.

But back to breakfast.

What would a kid do while seated at the kitchen table? He could read a comic book, of course, but more often the morning’s entertainment was provided by the back (and sides) of the cereal box itself.

There was something about the back of a cereal box that made it an object of fascination for a kid of the 60’s, even though he had read the words the previous day, and the day before that.Eventually, though, the words would become tedious, and it was time to switch to the sides. Thus did many a preteen learn of such terms as potassium hydrogen sulfite, calcium propionate, and my personal favorite, calcium disodium EDTA. I wasn’t sure what all of those chemicals did, but the cereal tasted great, so if they contributed to the experience, more power to ’em!

Of course, the average kid’s memory didn’t store the additives’ names for long. But I still recall them. After all, if it wasn’t for my above-average memory, I Remember JFK wouldn’t exist. 😉

Next, we’ll explore games on the back of the boxes, variety packs, and, of course, the toys that came inside.

We Boomer kids all had one thing in common: mornings were accompanied by breakfast.

Nowadays, I rise from bed at 3:30 AM and drive a half hour to my job as a geek (which I love, BTW) and begin drinking copious amounts of strong coffee while handling the third shift technical support calls which came in during the night.

Those out of the way, I might slip into the breakroom for a breakfast of lowfat pretzels or the like.

Yes, very strange, I admit. But strange breakfast food comes naturally to a kid who grew up eating a before-school concoction of sugar, milk, and a small amount of actual nutrients, to be consumed whilst reading the back of the cereal box.

The subject of breakfast food is a huge one, one which will take up three columns this week. This prelude will lay the foundation for the discussion, with actual examples of 1960’s-70’s morning kid fodder to be discussed in chapters two and three. And yes, I have previously covered cereal ads. But this discussion will be more about the finer points of life with the processed foodstuffs, along with examples of long-gone brands that you have probably forgotten about.

When we sprawled across our living room floors on Saturday mornings watching our favorite cartoons, cereal ads made up much of the advertising that was blasted our way. One of my favorites was this strange, unforgettable one featuring the unlikely combination of a barbershop quartet singing a Pidgin English jingle extolling the virtues of Puffa Puffa Rice:

Getting up in the morning was something that didn’t come naturally for most of us. What was the point? The bed was at its maximum comfort level at 7:00 am. Outside the bedroom awaited dad watching news on TV (yech!), school clothes laid out (eww!) and the prospect of waiting for use of the single bathroom (groan!).

But sitting on the kitchen table was salvation. A bowl full of Rice Crinkles (the rival pre-sweetened form of Rice Crispies, complete with a cartoon stereotypical Chinese pitchman on the front of the box by the VERY 60’s name of So-Hi) sat, loaded with an near-uncontrollable burst of energy to be delivered by its copious amounts of sugar dissolved in cold milk. Soon, I would be bolting out the door heading for school, my metabolism resembling that of a hummingbird. My second-grade teacher certainly had her hands full with twenty-nine other kids as wired as myself.

No wonder I start the day with strong coffee. I really miss that buzz.

Anyhow, stay tuned, as we explore the subject of long-gone breakfast cereals, as well as many that have withstood the test of time.

Such an important part of the Boomer kid’s daily routine deserves its own entire week, wouldn’t you agree?

Among the culinary delights that we loved when we were kids was a treat that our parents craved when they were our age, and possibly that our grandparents did also. They are commonly known as animal crackers, although cookies is a much more accurate moniker. And despite the ravages of new-age political correctness, they are still around for our own grandchildren to beg for at the grocery store.

It all began back in the late 19th century. Animal-shaped cookies were a hit over in Britain, and they began to be imported to the US. They were a hit over here, too, and US bakeries took note. Stauffer’s Biscuit Company began producing them on this side of the pond in 1871 in York, Pennsylvania. Several other bakeries jumped on the bandwagon as well, and some of these later merged to become the National Biscuit Company, aka Nabisco.

In 1902, Nabisco gave the diminutive cookies the name “Barnum’s Animals,” and began marketing them in a wagon-shaped box with a string attached. The boxes I remember had perforations on the bottom, which allowed the wheels to be extruded from the package, allowing the whole thing to sit up like a real wagon. Some kid probably got a paper cut, and the likely ensuing lawsuit likely made them vanish. (sigh)

Stauffer’s and Nabisco have had a bit of a rivalry over the centuries. The original US-made animal cracker was Stauffer’s creation, but for whatever reason, the concept was never copyrighted. Perhaps it was because it was copied from British bakeries in the first place. Nowadays, Stauffer’s advertises their product as the original animal cracker. But it was Nabisco’s wagon-shaped box that permeates my own memory of what constitutes an animal cookie.

Stauffer’s has made their money by selling their own product, as well as creating them for many other companies that sell them under their own names. However, I have to give Nabisco the game, set, and match for coming up with that box. It was in time for Christmas, 1902 when a bright mind came up with the idea of a circus wagon-shaped box, complete with a string that would allow it to be hung from the old Tannenbaum. The brilliance of the idea became manifest after the holiday season was over, when kids were seen all over the country carrying the nickel-priced boxes by those cotton straps.

My poor mom was verbally assaulted by waves of begging every time I went with her to Farrier’s IGA and approached the candy aisle. She would frequently give in. I guess she viewed the now steep price of ten cents as a good investment, since the box would be played with long after its sweet contents were devoured.

Barnum’s Animals, as well as Stauffer’s original animal crackers continue to survive today. Of course, it’s not without the stench of political correctness. The bars on the little boxes are long gone. We wouldn’t want the kiddies traumatized by the idea that animals in the circus are forced to be there against their will, now would we? But at least the contents are still made from the same formula that we remember so well.

Maybe one reason that mom frequently bought animal crackers for me is that she knew that the sugar content was far below that of the snacks that I normally inhaled. They were JUST sweet enough. The animals have remained the same as well, with occasional additions made over the years. The most recent for Nabisco was the koala, added by popular demand in 2002, celebrating 100 years of Barnum’s Animals. The dies that make their distinctive shapes have remained pretty much unmodified, as well. We should be grateful that nothing politically incorrect has been spotted there by the police (yet).

So here’s a suggestion: head down to the store and pick yourself up a box of Barnum’s Animals. Enjoy a treat from your past. They’re still around, they’re not too fattening, not too sugary, and taste just like you remember. How many childhood treats can you say THAT about?