Hostess with the Mostest?

I've been enjoying Waffle Whiffer's recent blog and Flickr posts about Hostess Cakes and their delightful mascots, particularly Fruit Pie the Magician. (If you haven't seen them, go there now!)While I remember Twinkie the Kid growing up, I have to admit that I don't have any memories of Fruit Pie the Magician. I got to wondering about this, and I think I know why. Growing up outside of Philadelphia, the snack cake market was (and is) dominated by Philadelphia-based Tastykake. While we occasionally ate Twinkies or Drake's Cakes' Devil Dogs or Yodels, mostly we ate Tastykake's Krimpets, Kandy Kakes, and their fruit pies (pineapple cheese is the best!).

I have a few Tastykake items that came from my grandfather's grocery store including this great 2-sided hang tag:


And this ruler:


Tastykake has a great font and a catchy jingle ("Nobody bakes a cake as tasty as a Tastykake..."), but it is severely lacking in the mascot department - at least until now. Browsing the Tastykake website, I found that they seem to have a new mascot, Kirbee Krimpet!

Here's a plush Kirbee:

And here's Kirbee on a tin (full of Krimpets, naturally):

Kirbee seems to be Butterscotch Krimpet, not a Jelly Krimpet, which I generally prefer, but I don't mind. A YouTube search turned up a recent commercial featuring Kirbee and the Phillies Phanatic:

Courtesy of CircleOneMarketing1 on YouTube

Kirbee hasn't made his way onto the packaging yet, but who knows?

Thank You, Veterans!

If you're looking for the perfect way to thank your favorite veteran, why not surprise them with an item featuring Spammy the Spam can? It's sure to remind them of one of their favorite service memories: a delicious meal of Spam at the mess hall!

The Spam Shop features an array of Spammy merchandise including:

A Spammy Bean Bag Plush:



A magnet:

A bobble head:

A wall clock:

Golf balls:

Keychain:

Spammy Jammies:

A blanket:

There are many other Spammy and Spam-related items to chose from. With the holiday season right around the corner, it could also be the solution for all your gift giving needs!

Mr. Peanut Memories

In a previous post, I mentioned how my love of Mr. Peanut stems from early exposure to advertising premiums through my grandfather's small grocery store. Some premiums were designed for retail customers, but others were meant just for the grocery retailers themselves.

This profit calculator was given out by Planters to retailers like my grandfather. By sliding the inner card to match up the number of items in a carton or case with the cost in one window, the other window shows the percent profit for potential selling prices.

One side shows unit prices 25¢ and up, while the other shows 5¢ to 25¢.

Mr. Peanut's Guide to Profits is dated May 1972, and shows the current packaging for Planters peanuts, mixed nuts, and single-serving bags sold under the Southern Belle brand.

Less than a year later, in January 1973, this picture of me and my grandfather was taken in front of the candy counter of his store.

Look closely at the middle row of the candy counter and you can see three Planters items for sale. First, the white box on the left contains an unknown Planters item. It might be single serving bags of peanuts (probably in an earlier version of the bags shown here), but it could be a Chocolaty Coated Peanut Block or a Peanut Butter Chew. Then, in the orange box are peanut butter cups and next are peanut candy bars. Special thanks to JasonLiebig for posting these and many other great images of his packaging, advertising, and ephemera collection on Flickr!

I don't actually remember eating the Planters items in the candy case. When I was old enough to eat such things, I favored Fruit Stripe gum and Swedish Fish. Maybe the Planters candy was already phased out by then? However, I do have an original shipping box from the store that contained the peanut butter cups:

The sides:

The top:

Each display box held 24 individual cups. That's 288 cups in the box! If only we knew the wholesale price, Mr. Peanut could tell us just what the profit would be!

I had noticed that the Planters Peanut Candy bars have made a resurgence, so I decided I had to try one (or two) for research purposes.

It's basically peanut brittle with more peanuts and less brittle. It was good, but I couldn't help feeling like it must have been a pale imitation of the original, and it was awfully small. The original wrapper called it a Jumbo Block, and the new version is a mere 1.6 ounces. Then I looked carefully at the old Jumbo Block label and saw that it was only 0.83 ounces! No wonder we weigh so much more these days!

The Planters website also lists a Big Nut Bar, so I figured I had better track down some of these for comparison. It turns out these are more like a granola bar and are sold in boxes of 5 in the granola bar section of grocery stores.

The front of the box:

The individual wrapper:

These were good, too, and lacked the ominous "Choking Warning" of the Peanut Bar candy.

Wouldn't it be great if Planters re-issued the peanut butter cups, peanut chews, and chocolaty coated blocks? And you could still get Mr. Peanut items by saving the labels?!

Bean My Valentine

Today is Valentine’s Day, a day when people's thoughts naturally turn to romance. And beans. After all, what could be more romantic than beans? Beans, beans, they’re good for your heart!

In previous posts, I’ve lamented the fact that premiums – items you could get by sending in labels, box tops, UPC codes, etc. – seem to be much less common now than in the past. So I was especially surprised and delighted to receive a special Valentine’s Day treat from my sister Maria of Curly-Wurly: a plush anthropomorphic Chick Pea (aka Garbanzo Bean):

Chi Chi Chick Pea, as her tag says, is a mail-away premium from Hanover, a Pennsylvania-based food company. One merely has to send in the UPC codes from eight 15.5 ounce (or larger) cans of beans. Or for just 16 UPCs you can also get Chick's friend, Kid Bean:

I have to admit I noticed this offer in the grocery store, and I almost bought eight cans of beans, but I just couldn't do it. I'm just not a big fan of garbanzo beans and that's almost eight pounds of beans. But my sister, who claims to actually like chick peas, valiantly consumed the required amount and sent in the UPCs for me. Now if that's not sisterly love, then I don't know what is!

Continuing with the romantic bean theme, here is a T-shirt from Del Monte featuring a can of green beans down on bended knee as if to propose and exclaiming "Where You Bean All My Life!":

While technically he just has arms and legs, but no eyes, I think he still counts as anthropomorphic food. This is a children's T-shirt I've had since the 70s. I remember that my grandfather, who owned a small grocery store, got it and another one with a "Human Bean" image from Del Monte. I clearly wore this a lot, as the many stains can attest...

For those of you not enjoying the Valentine’s Day bean theme and prefer something more traditional, here are some adorable scratch-n-sniff cards (also a gift from my sister) featuring cute chocolates and chocolate-covered strawberries and cherries with eyes:

The cards themselves:

These cards do have a wonderfully potent chocolate-strawberry smell!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Pancake Breakfast

Sunday mornings mean pancakes to me. Whole wheat pancakes with sugar-free syrup. But back in the '80s pancakes were light and fluffy, fiber-free treats smothered in thick and rich Mrs. Butterworth's Syrup. And if you were very lucky, Mrs. Butterworth herself even made them for you, as she did for these boys in 1984:


Courtesy of milwaukeetvmadman on YouTube

Although I don't remember my mother making pancakes a lot, we must have eaten enough Mrs. Butterworth's Syrup for my mother to send away for this colorforms-type set in 1986. It features a board with a breakfast scene of a larger-than-life Mrs. Butterworth:

And a sheet of food and kitchen accessories to complete the picture:

Ostensibly, my mother got this for my 5-year-old sister as I was much too old for this in 1986. But when my sister tired of it, I somehow persuaded her to give it to me and have kept it ever since (you can have it back Maria, if you want). The pieces have long since lost their stick or I would have created a special scene.

Mrs. Butterworth made her TV debut in 1961, almost 50 years ago. The years have taken their toll as she's now plastic and has indistinct features. But she's trying to keep up with the times. She has her own website, of course. Check out the "For Fun" section to create and print your own Mrs. Butterworth art. She even recently appeared in a Geico commercial:

Courtesy of tungstenfluff7 on You Tube

I know Mrs. Butterworth isn't strictly speaking "food with eyes," but more of a anthropomorphic bottle. Still, as a spokescharacter who has stood the test of time, I think she deserves our attention and admiration. Thank you for being so thick and rich for all these years, Mrs. Butterworth.

Merry Christmas from Food With Eyes!

When I think of my favorite things, food with eyes and diners immediately come to mind (followed closely by schnitzel with noodles). So what could be better than a diner with anthropomorphic food? How about a Christmas diner with anthropomorphic food? That's just what M&M's was thinking when they released their Official M&M's Brand Christmas Village Diner in 1996.

Here are the M&M's listening to the jukebox and ordering their burgers and fries:

Spinning some platters and playing music:

Sipping an ice cream soda:

Looking cool and hula hooping:

Open 24 hours!

It's all very official:

Apparently, M&M's released a whole series of tins from 1995-2005. You can find them here. Photo booth and recording studio? They were really grasping at straws toward the end. At least they didn't get to nursing home and funeral parlor!

Happy Holidays!

National Sticker Month

Did you know that April is National Sticker Month? No? Well, that's because I just made it up. In fact, when you google "National Sticker Month" nothing comes up at all - until now, that is. But it seems like there should be a National Sticker Month, and April is a good candidate since it doesn't have much else going on. So I'm going to take this opportunity to showcase some great food with eyes stickers for the next 30 days.

To start us off, here's a nice sheet of giveaway stickers from Wegmans, the best grocery store ever:

Each fruit or veggie is on its own circular sticker. I got these in the mid-late 90s (perhaps I was a bit older than their target audience...). Who wouldn't strive for five if fruits and vegetables always looked this cute?

National Peanut Month

March is National Peanut Month. I’d planned this post for March 1st, but somehow two weeks have disappeared, and now it’s the 15th. But that still leaves two more weeks to enjoy peanuts this month. In fact, National Peanut Month actually began as National Peanut Week in 1941 and expanded to a month-long celebration in 1974 (13 years before March also became Women’s History Month, incidentally).

You might think that Mr. Peanut would be the spokesnut for National Peanut Month, but in fact that job goes to Buddy McNutty:

Buddy no doubt appeals to kids more than stodgy old Mr. Peanut. Instead of a top hat and spats, this peanut is decked out in an informal baseball cap and sneakers. Buddy McNutty is also the star of a comic book detailing his many adventures. It turns out that a variety of Buddy McNutty merchandise is available from The National Peanut Board's Peanut Store, including this poster:This poster shows a dark time in the history of peanut production when many were forced to work under hazardous conditions for low wages in the peanut mines.

The National Peanut Board is just one peanut group of many including the Georgia Peanut Commission. This Georgian peanut definitely has a hillbilly look about him. I doubt he and Mr Peanut socialize much.

And here we have peanut oil marching along with a package of peanuts:

The Virginia Carolina Peanut Association even provides some clip art shown below:

Baseball Peanut

Sweet Valentine's Day Peanut

So for the next two weeks, remember to eat your peanuts and think of Buddy McNutty.

Mr. Peanut for President

Today is Presidents' Day here in the U.S.A., a day when we think back on the great leaders that shaped our country's history. One name inevitably comes to mind on this day: Mr. Peanut. While he was never actually president (the closest we've come was peanut farmer Jimmy Carter, although we do have a different sort of nut in the White House now), Mr. Peanut holds an important place in U.S. history as the following coloring book demonstrates.

Presidents of the United States to Color - A History from Washington to Johnson was a 1965 premium from Planters Peanuts, then part of Standard Brands.



Click on each picture for a full size image to print out and color. Be sure to have your "peanut tan" crayon handy. A word of caution: the following images may be disturbing to those with a phobia of life-sized, top hat-wearing peanuts.

Let's skip to the third president, Thomas Jefferson, because nothing involving Mr. Peanut happened during the terms of Washington and John Adams. Here Mr. Peanut comes on the scene in a big way, obliterating much of the original 13 colonies, which hold little interest after the Louisiana Purchase:

Also during Jefferson's presidency, Robert Fulton built the first steamboat. This feat isn't nearly as interesting as the eleven-foot-tall peanut at the helm:

Our fifth president, James Monroe, purchased Florida from Spain. He hoped it could contain the huge peanut creature which had now grown to the size of Rhode Island. Here Mr. Peanut dangles his feet in the Gulf of Mexico:

The presidency of John Quincy Adams saw the opening of the Erie Canal. Here's Mr. Peanut standing near Lock 9 in Rotterdam:

Very little of interest happened for 20 years, then Zachary Taylor became the 12th president. While you may remember him as "Old Rough and Ready," his greatest achievent was being born in Virgina, whose warm, sandy soil is excellent for growing peanuts:

Also during the term of Zachary Taylor, gold was discovered in California. The "Gold Rush" sent thousands of men and peanut men to seek their fortunes:

Nothing of importance happened for another 20 years, but then, in 1869 Mr. Peanut single-handedly built the Union Pacific Railroad:

Next, in a complete non sequitur, farmers dig up the peanut vines for shells to harden and nuts to firm:

A bunch more presidents did some stuff, culminating in the 1906 introduction of Planters Peanuts:

Suddenly going back in time, Mr. Peanut was on hand for the 1903 flight at Kitty Hawk. Although the Wright Brothers made the first "man-carrying airplane flight," Mr. Peanut was an accomplished aviator by this point:

Then a few world wars happened, a depression, some things were shot into space, and president #35 was assassinated, all of which pale in comparison to our last page - nutritious peanut products and the places Mr. Peanut grows best (everything really is bigger in Texas):