I saw this business name on the side of a truck while we were both on the 880 freeway somewhere in Oakland, and it made my day.
Logo for Fighting Amish Electric in South Berkeley. Slogan: “Amish Quality, Modern Technology.”
Of course, it helps to know about the Fighting Irish. And the electricity-shunning Amish.
Elsewhere in oxymorons: Penn’s Fighting Quakers.
Spartanburg (South Carolina) Herald-Journal, October 18, 1936
Hostess Brands Inc., the 82-year-old snack-foods company based in Irving, Texas, announced today that it will close its plants and fire all 18,000 of its workers. The company had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in January. The corporate website says the company “was forced by a Bakers Union strike” to shut down. The union says the claim is false.
Hostess—founded in Missouri in 1930 as Interstate Bakeries Corporation—had been the largest wholesale baker and distributor of baked goods in the United States. Its many brands included Wonder Bread, Dolly Madison, Ho Hos, Sno Balls, Ding Dongs, and Colombo, but the company’s most famous product name may have been Twinkies, the “golden sponge cake with creamy filling” with a seemingly limitless shelf life.
Why was it called “Twinkies”? Serendipity.
According to a Chicago Tribune story, the first Twinkies “bounced out of the ovens at Continental Baking Co.” in River Forest, Illinois, in 1930:
Plant manager James Dewar was looking to create a cheap, two-for-a nickel snack. So he grabbed some shortcake pans and got cookin’. Dewar got the name from a billboard for Twinkle Toe Shoes. He shortened it to Twinkies, and the rest is snack food history.
That history took a grim turn during the 1979 trial of Dan White, the San Francisco supervisor who assassinated Mayor George Moscone and a fellow supervisor, Harvey Milk. White’s defense lawyers argued that their client’s mental capacity had been damaged by his excessive consumption of junk food. No specific food product was ever mentioned in the courtroom, but reporters coined “Twinkie defense” as shorthand for the argument. The term survives “as a derisive term for an improbable legal defense” (Wikipedia).
The sausage-shaped character on the Twinkies package has a name: Twinkie the Kid. A registered trademark since 1971, it was used in commercials and in collectible products, which are probably going to become a little more collectible.
Today’s Chicago Tribune has a slide show of 15 “iconic” Hostess products, including Holsum bread, which at one point used this dandy slogan:
“If you had a million dollars you couldn’t buy better bread.”
According to a Wikipedia entry, “Holsum” was used by many retail bakeries in the early 20th century, when whimsical phonetic brand spellings were all the rage. (See my August 2011 Visual Thesaurus column, “Phood for Thought,” for more examples.) In 1908, the W.E. Long Company of Chicago acquired exclusive rights to the name. Holsum bread is still sold; its mascot, Mr. Slice, was created in 1976.
UPDATE: At Duets Blog, trademark lawyer Dan Kelly considers the post-dissolution fate of Hostess Brand’s many marks.
For your frittering pleasure: a Flickr set of “weird advertising characters” that’s a nostalgiafest, a kitschapalooza, and a bizarrorama. Step right up and see the seppuku-ing pig, the martini-sipping pink poodle, the shockingly un-PC Frito Bandito, the Doggie Diner doggie, the Chicken of the Sea mermaid, and much, much more.
Including, I’m happy to report, a trove of “mister” names and mascots.
Mr. Sketch water color markers. Credit: Waffle Whiffer. (Read my Visual Thesaurus column about other “sketch” trademarks!)
Mr. Chicken Plank. No idea what he was selling, but he had a companion called Miss Fish Fillet. Credit: Waffle Whiffer.
Mister Provolone, an Italian brand. Do you suppose he’s met Mister Baby? Credit: Zellaby.
Mr. Blobby marshmallows, a UK brand from the 1990s. They’re blobbilicious! Credit: Jason Liebig.
You could get blintzes at Mr. Perky’s! Tray liner, c. 1960s. Credit: Poptartsbox
Mr. Melon watermelon candy. Credit: Wafflewhiffer.
Mr. Contac, pill-head. Credit: Isle of Lucy.
There’s also a quite charming but non-downloadable Mr. Pickle photo. And in the non-mister category, I’m awfully fond of Pump ’n’ Munch.
Via AdFreak.
It’s a worthy cause, I’m sure.
But a jogging, sunglasses-wearing, pain-arrow-emanating brain for a mascot? Ouch.
Those colors! I'm seeing an aura ...
Besides, the whole concept of sponsoring a running race to raise money for headache research strikes me as inappropriate. Wouldn’t pounding through Golden Gate Park with hundreds of sweaty fellow-joggers be an automatic migraine trigger? For next year’s event, I propose an alternative to Miles for Migraine—say, Several Hours Lying Absolutely Still in a Quiet, Darkened Room (with Plenty of Strong Drugs) for Migraine.
There are bad names and gross-out names. And then there are names that are just grossly bad.
Elf droppings? Seriously, Hayneedle?
Pee&Poo sells children’s wear and stuffed Pee and Poo mascot toys.*
Hat tips to Twitter pals Mighty Red Pen (Elf Droppings) and Nancy Davis Kho (Pee&Poo).
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* The company is Swedish, but that’s no excuse.
My parents bought their house in 1968; since my father's death two months ago, my brothers and I have been sorting through the contents--an emotional task made especially daunting by the fact that both parents were champion Keepers. We've found receipts dating back to the early 1950s, multiple photocopies of trivia quizzes from Elderhostel trips taken almost 20 years ago, and unopened packages of twin-size cotton-polyester sheets in perky floral patterns from the late 1960s.
And last weekend, on an expedition into the deep recesses of the walk-in pantry, my brother Michael discovered more artifacts.
I don't remember ever seeing this can or hearing of this brand. Right under the "Gumption" product name you can just barely see the line "Made in England." But someone evidently Americanized the copy on the reverse side, which includes the words stove and aluminum. In Britain they'd have been cooker and aluminium. That aside, what a great name and what a fabulous use of type! I counted seven fonts, but I may have missed one. Though it's difficult to discern, at the very top there's a cartoon mascot whose head is shaped like a scrub brush. That's "Little Gumption" himself.
Gumption was apparently acquired by Clorox, which continues to sell it in the United Kingdom.
I wasn't familiar with this product, either:
From the looks of the spokesmodel drawing, it dates from the early 1960s. At the time, Zud was manufactured by Boyle-Midway in New York; the company was later acquired by American Home Products, which sold it in 1990 to British household-products giant Reckitt Benckiser. And whaddya know: you can still buy Zud, albeit with a snappy new logo. The product must be really good to have survived such a leaden name.
I definitely remember Peter Pan peanut butter, although not necessarily this 28-ounce can:
According to a Wikipedia entry, Peter Pan peanut butter was introduced in 1920 by the Derby Foods division of Swift & Company under the name "E.K. Pond." That may have sounded uncomfortably close to Pond's cold cream (introduced in 1914); for whatever reason, the peanut butter got its current name in 1928. You opened the can with the key that you detached from the base. (In a kitchen drawer, Michael and I found a small collection of peanut-butter-can keys.) The Wikipedia entry says that cans were discontinued during World War II because of metal shortages, but this design appears to date from the late 1940s or early 1950s. Wikipedia jogged my memory about a Peter Pan slogan: "Picky people pick Peter Pan peanut butter, it's the peanut butter picky people pick."
The Peter Pan brand is now owned by ConAgra. It was the subject of a 2007 recall because of a salmonella outbreak.
Finally, this bit of paper packaging, saved for who knows what reason:
The futuristic logo (and the pricetag from Fedco, a consumers' cooperative where our family frequently shopped) would seem to date this package from the early 1960s. Again: amazing use of typography. The Goodell Company of Antrim, New Hampshire, was established in 1875; besides the Hampshire Spreader, it also made the Perfect Pencil Pointer, a pencil sharpener. The Antrim website mentions the company in passing and includes this poignant paragraph about the town:
Today most farms and factories are gone. Some of the mill buildings still stand, but they are no longer used for manufacturing, The schools and Frameworks are the largest employers. Most townspeople work in bigger surrounding towns like Peterborough and Hillsboro.
And most of the utensils used in American kitchens are manufactured in China.
My parents didn't hang onto these products because of their nostalgic design. I'm sure they believed there was some useful life left in them. The Gumption and Zud were still part full; the Peter Pan can served as a container for paper clips and such. The cardboard spreader package? Possibly saved as a reminder of the bargain price.
But I started wondering: Is there any current consumer packaging that I treasure enough to save? How about you?
