American Culinary Dominance

The advertisement below dates back to 1964.

This was a time when home freezer ownership was becoming commonplace.  At least it was in our household.  I clearly remember the big, upright Sears Frost Free Coldspot  freezer prominently ensconced next to the ancient beer fridge in the basement laundry room.  

That freezer was a godsend as it allowed mom to freeze seasonal fruit, berries, homemade applesauce and her delicious baked goods.  We'd stock-up on bakery from the day-old bread store and all manner of grocery sale items that could stand freezing found their way there.  Amazingly, that freezer was still running when I bought my first house in 1984 and it was moved into my basement laundry room where it delivered years of maintenance-free service before the power company offered me a $100 savings bond to haul it away. 

Anyway, back in the mid 1960s the market for TV dinners and convenience foods, including frozen pizzas, was expanding and naturally, Chef Boy-Ar-Dee dipped their toe in the market.

Ironically, I have no memory of a frozen pizza served our household; although we could get carryout from a local pizzeria on rare celebratory occasions.  Chef Boy-Ar-Dee was a major player in the convenience meal niche and having dominated the boxed pizza kit sector the Chef brought to market a premade frozen pizza.  Simple cheese or sausage and cheese. 

Clearly the advertising is targeted to teenagers and their parents touting the frozen pizza as the ultimate party-perfect food; freezer to table in minutes.

Notably, this was the peak of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee as an independent company.  In 1966 the brand was acquired by American Home Products; a national leader in convenience food offerings.

I have to say, the pizza pictured is not very appealing.  There, again, frozen pizzas were a novelty in 1964; and after sixty years of culinary evolution they now command their own territory in the frozen foods section of a grocery to accommodate the selection.  That's impressive progress for sure. 

I should add that I have admittedly become a pizza snob; and make my own sourdough pizza and bread dough.  I make pizza sauce made from San Marzano tomatoes grown - not in the rich volcanic soils in the shadow of Mount Vesuvius - but in marginal Door County soil in the shadow of Brussels Hill.  

And I'm rather adept at it. 

 

 

You Can Trust Your Car....

...to the man that wears the star. 

Used to promote the sale of their Fire Chief gasoline brand Texaco introduced this nifty firefighter helmet in the 1960s.  It was available exclusively through Texaco filling stations for $3.98 with a fill-up.  It became an iconic promotional item that any boy would want to have.  My little brother had one.

Naturally, it boasted the technology of the era with a transistor loudspeaker and a handset microphone powered by a 9v battery.  Same as your transistor radio. 

Next time I see my brother I'll endeavor to remember to ask if he still has his helmet.  Even if it's no longer working it might be worth $20+ on eBay.  An excellent condition, working model might fetch $75-$100 from a collector.  While a pristine model in the original box might command a price north of $400.

Who knew.... 

Dairy Trivia

The advertisement pictured is a charming piece of 1950s northeast agricultural history.  Sneider's Dairy operated out of Menominee, Michigan immediately adjacent to Marinette, Wisconsin.  And directly across the bay to the north.  The four digit phone number (3533) is the clue that solved the riddle. 

Bashful Bessie was the dairy's answer to Borden's Elsie the Cow.  

Bessie's long eyelashes and the pun - It's In The Bag (udder) was a characteristic of the wholesome imagery of that era.  Same for the doctor recommendation.  With the introduction of rural electrification and expansion of pasteurization and homogenized milk the scientific achievement in food safety was worth crowing-about.

Growing-up we had a milkman who delivered a couple of times a week leaving glass bottles of milk in the box on our doorstep.  Sealtest Dairy if memory serves.

Can you pick me out in the photo?

The packaging in the advertising is a wax-coated paper carton used for grocery store distribution.

Sneider's was a staple in the Upper Peninsula and Northeast Wisconsin for decades.  With the passage of time they were absorbed by larger regional dairy co-ops; yet vintage memorabilia like this shows-up in antique shops and on the interweb from time-to-time and is an interesting walk down memory lane for anyone interested in mid-century marketing and local history.

Makes My Teeth Ache

This is an interesting bit of breakfast cereal lore that dates back to the mid 1960s.  Post Sugar Sparkled Rice Krinkles and their animated mascot, an Asian boy named So-Hi (because he was ''so high").  I missed-out on this opportunity as this cereal wasn't part of our household line-up; nevertheless, each box included the So-Hi Rickshaw Racer.

For the time it was rather nifty; including easy-to-assemble parts featuring a tiny figure of So-Hi pulling a two-wheeled rickshaw.  The kit included some string and a small plastic bucket which functioned as a counterweight.  Tie the string to the rickshaw, put a coin in the bucket, hook it over the edge of the kitchen table and let the weight drop.  The falling weight would cause So-Hi and his rickshaw to zip across the table at high speed.  Fun stuff and you were always one box away from a replacement once it broke.

At the time Madison Avenue didn't have any of today's qualms about cultural tropes like gongs, a broken-English accent, conical hats or rickshaws. So-Hi was intended to be a fun and lighthearted replacement for an unsettling clown mascot dating back to the 1950s; he even had a role as a regular character on Linus the Lionhearted, a Saturday morning cartoon show funded entirely by General Foods (Post) where the characters were literally cereal mascots.

Naturally, this era used cultural characters to foster instant identity.  Frito Lay had the Frito Bandito, Pillsbury used Funny Face drink mixes with flavors like Injun Orange and Chinese Cherry.  Post had So-Hi.

Post eventually retired So-Hi realizing that Rice Krinkles didn't need the baggage of a clown that creeped-out children or a mascot becoming a textbook example of racial stereotyping.  In 1971 they repurposed their puffed-rice operation and launched a licensed and inoffensive mascot; Fruity Pebbles.  Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble became pitchmen for sugary children's breakfast cereal.

 Now you know the rest of the story. 

Is It Real, Or Is It Memorex?

This was a popular advertising slogan from the 1970s for cassette recording tapes that Millennials are unlikely to identify-with as they're not going to recognize the marketing campaign.  Nevertheless, if you are a baby boomer you already know that the Memorex brand audio recording tapes claimed to offer such an authentic playback experience that the listener would not be able to differentiate a live performance from an audio recording. 

I still have a soft-sided case of Memorex mix tapes in my pick-up truck that are the industry's contribution to bootleg music recordings.  But I digress.

I'm sharing this anecdote as further evidence that nowadays you cannot expect that everything you see on the interweb or social media is real.  It may very well be an AI fake.

For instance this advertisement for the Spacematic Food Spinner 2000, boldly marketed by the Spacematic Corporation as The Futuristic Food Preparation Center for Today's Space Age Family!   According to the ad it is an all-in-one tabletop unit that can spin, mix, blend, heat and serve an entire meal visualized thru a See-Through Dome.  It comes equipped with a One-Touch Control Panel and a Revolutionary Gyro-Mix Feature that cooks food evenly in individual wedges.  All of this George Jetson Family space-age technology is yours for only $19.95 (plus tax).

Pretty cool, eh?

Nope.  It's all made-up.  It never existed.

This is a clever piece of AI-generated art that perfectly captures the atomic-age aesthetic of the late 1950s or early 1960s.

How to tell?  

The text lacks any specific details ordinarily included in a vintage Sears or Montgomery Ward advertisement. The capsule structure behind the tidy nuclear family looks like a spaceship instead of a suburban kitchen.  The food in the spinner is indistinct and doesn't include any jello.  Finally there's the RetroFuture Vault watermark in the bottom right corner.

It's certainly entertaining; but you won't find one on EBay....

You can be sure..

  ...if it's Westinghouse!

This vintage commercial for the Westinghouse Food File Refrigerator highlights the product's design solutions for growing families who now find their post-war models too cramped.

Storage capacity offered more than twelve feet of storage space - considered cavernous in the mid-1950s.  Westinghouse's Food File organizer with a place for everything and everything in its place; included patented roll-out shelves, a Meat Keeper, Humidrawers for produce, in-door storage sections for fruit, cheese butter and eggs and a full-width freezer overhead. 

Naturally, the commercial concludes with the brand's long-standing slogan:  "You can be sure if it's Westinghouse"

Other brands of that era included Frigidaire, GE and Kelvinator.  I cannot recall seeing full size Westinghouse fridges on a showroom floor when we were looking a few years ago.  The US market for this brand is mostly compact, beverage and specialty models.  Nevertheless, kitchen models continue to be manufactured and sold globally.  The interweb tells me they're the top choice for Australians.  How 'bout that, mate!

Before the tariff regime hit we replaced all of our major kitchen appliances and our three-door GE Profile fridge sports many of the same features 70 years later.  Except it has 27 cubic feet of storage space and manufactures ice faster than a thirsty deer camp can consume it. 

Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

The device in the photo is the real deal.  A bizarre as it appears it is not AI generated,  photo shopped or a social media hoax.  It's a modern day Hookah.  If you came of age in the 1970's you would know what a water pipe or Hookah is.  But I digress.

The Robot Smoker was a novelty ashtray sold by Sears, Roebuck & Company around 1957.  It has a modern-sounding name but wasn't at all robotic; just playing on the technological advancements of  and more likely a play on the 'Space Age' aesthetic of the time.

You placed a lit cigarette into the holder of the weighted base and a long, flexible tube allowed you to have a smoke at a distance without getting up from your chair, interrupt your television viewing, putting down your book or paper or getting out of bed.  The only thing even close to robotic was the Automatic Butt Ejector; a spring-loaded feature that flipped the spent filter our so you didn't have to touch it.  Priced at $2.97 (roughly $30 nowadays).  An extra dollar got you an upgrade for a two person model to accommodate whomever you were sleeping with. 

Sears sold all sorta stuff throughout its long merchandising lifetime including novelties and gadgets.  Unlike a useful Craftsman wrench this device never became a household staple.  Within a couple of decades the health impacts of tobacco use became better-known and elaborate smoking apparatus fell out of favor. 

A couple of my pals are firefighters with the local department and they would likely be horrified by this.  The ad explicitly suggests its use while lounging in a chair or in bed.  Vintage collectors will tell you that if you coughed or sneezed into the tube you could launch a lit cig across the room.  Sounds like a peril that might very-well void the homeowners insurance you purchased from Sears as well.

Fast Fact:  Elektro the Moto-Man was a giant seven foot tall robot that demonstrated its ability to smoke cigarettes at the 1939 World's Fair ostensibly to demonstrate its air-intake system.  Maybe that's the inspiration for the name?  Alas, all is lost to history.

My smoking history was short-lived.  Good thing.   

American Culinary Dominance

As the resident food snob here at The Platz it is noteworthy that the price of Rao's pizza and pasta sauces have near doubled in the last year.  How do I know this?  I am the chief grocery shopper and resident Pantry Warrior in our household.  I am also a fan of imported Italian bottled sauces as a consequence of their quality ingredients (San Marzano tomatoes) and unlike American manufacturers their scorning of sugar and preservatives in their recipes.  

Some of the cost increase is a consequence of Donald Trump's taxes on imported goods and the rest is a consequence of inflationary pressure on raw materials, packaging, logistics and labor.  Some of it is what I attribute to the 'Snobbery Premium' or the cost of high demand for a quality reputation and the balance to the $2.7 billion acquisition of Sovos Brands by Campbell's.    

Which leads to this walk down memory lane.   

This image is a print advertisement from 1964-1965 for Chef Boy-Ar-Dee Spaghetti Sauces that were part of a mid-century marketing campaign that ran during the 1950s and 1960s.

Not surprising is the emphasis placed-upon the slow-simmered, hand-stirred, 'Old Italian Way' of authentic Italian sauces directly from Nonna's kitchen stove in Naples to your own kitchen from an American tin can.  Mind you, the theme is that this is a recurring 'secret' as no self-respecting American housewife would dare reveal the ease of which such gourmet results could be obtained simply by opening a can and rewarming the contents on a stove top and pouring it over boiled noodles.  Microwave technology improved-upon the concept by the 1980s.

Chef Boy-Ar-Dee was a real person - his name phonetically spelled so salesmen could pronounce it correctly - Ettore 'Hector' Boiardi (1897-1985) was a honest-to-goodness world-renowned chef. Born in Piacenza, Italy, he immigrated to the states at age 16 and was employed at the prestigious Plaza Hotel in New York City.

Striking out on his own he opened his own restaurant in Cleveland in 1924 - Il Giardino d'Italia.  His sauce was such a customer favorite that he bottled it in repurposed milk bottles for customers to take home. Due to high demand he and brothers Paul and Mario opened a small canning operation in 1928 producing a Ready-To-Heat Spaghetti Kit.  Included was a small can of grated Parmesan cheese making Boiardi the largest American importer of the product at the time.  By 1938 operations had outgrown the Cleveland facility and moved to Milton, Pennsylvania where it could grow its own tomatoes and mushrooms to keep up with national demand.   

In 1942 Chef Boiardi transformed his highly successful commercial pasta business located in Milton into a massive 24/7 operation supporting the war effort producing beef ravioli and other canned pastas for C rations.  At its peak the operation employed 5,000 workers producing roughly 250,000 cans of food per day.  This immigrant chef encouraged his employee with the patriotic slogan: Keep 'em flying! Keep 'em rolling! Keep 'em well-fed!  In 1946 the War Department awarded Hector Boiardi with the Gold Star Order of Excellence - one of the highest honors a civilian can receive from the military. 

Post-war Boiardi faced a dilemma: his factory was too large for civilian demand and he did not wish to lay-off the thousands he hired for the war effort.  He sold the company to American Home Brands in 1946 and remained the public face of his brand until his passing in 1985.  

Immigrant child laborer, chef, entrepreneur, patriot and promoter of affordable canned pasta and sauce.  This is the stuff that made America great!

American Culinary Dominance

The TV dinner represents a major shift in our 20th Century lifestyle - the moon shot  moment the aluminum-plated frozen meal met the living room.  To be clear, I haven't had a TV dinner in more than five decades; however eating in the living room persists as a cultural shift.

Believe it or not, this uniquely American gastronomical contribution to our rich culture heritage has an origin story involving C.A. Swanson & Sons.  Seems that following Thanksgiving in 1953, the company found itself with 260 tons of unsold frozen turkey sitting in ten refrigerated rail cars.  

Gerry Thomas, a Swanson salesman, inspired by the tiered aluminum trays used by airline commissaries envisioned a complete frozen meal that could be heated and consumed smack dab in front of a television.  In 1954 Swanson launched the TV Dinner and sold 10 million turkey dinners that year.  The original price was 98 cents. 

Naturally, this coincided with the launch of the space race and all things aluminum and before too long menu offerings included entrees like fried chicken, Salisbury steak, meatloaf and eventually a fourth compartment featuring a dessert such as a brownie or fruit cobbler.  Swanson ditched the 'TV Dinner' name from their packaging by 1962; nevertheless, just like Kleenex tissues the name stuck as part of our vast genericized American cultural lexicon.

With the proliferation of microwave ovens, by the mid 1980s plastic and paperboard packaging conspired to deliver your frozen gourmet feast in less than ten minutes!  

Sure, I'm being modestly snarky because I'm a food snob but I admit that this mash-up of industrialization and frozen food technology was a boon to working families struggling to get dinner on time and on the table.  Trust me, I've eaten my share of frozen Banquet turkey pot pies served at the temperature of molten lava on the surface of the planet Mercury.   You might have too.

Anyway, the Chopped Sirloin of Beef (hamburger) swimming in a ubiquitous brown gravy highlighted a partnership between Swanson and Pepperidge Farm featuring a blueberry muffin in the fourth compartment thus elevating the culinary experience to the level of festive celebration.  Mad Men advertising brilliance!

Between you and me the inclusion of crinkle-cut fries and buttered peas is a monument to the pinnacle of American industrial processed food know-how, sodium content and poor food pairings.  The birthday candle and even the smiling cat screams domestic tranquility.

Dammit; this is the Right Stuff.  This is what Made America Great!  

---

Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

One of the most storied names in the tobacco business is Chesterfield; remembered for its rapid rise in popularity in the med-20th century and its iconic They Satisfy marketing campaigns.

The cigarette brand can trace its lineage all the way back to 1873 when it was introduced by the Drummond Tobacco Company of St. Louis, Missouri. 

In 1911 Chesterfield was acquired by Liggett & Myers (L&M) and they reblended it into a Turkish-Virginia mix to compete with Camel and Lucky Strike.  In the 1930s and 40s it was the Big Three - Camel, Lucky Strike and Chesterfield - that engaged in a fierce tobacco war spending millions on radio, print and celebrity endorsements to grab their share of a rapidly-growing population of smokers.

During World War II combat field rations (C and K) included a pack of three, four or nine cigarettes introducing an entire generation of servicemen and women to smoking on the the government's dime.  While Chesterfield was most frequently found in K rations, by the end of the war industry leader Camel had earmarked more than half of their total annual production to the military.

Chesterfield's signature slogan was They Satisfy - eventually introducing Blow Some My Way in a not so subtle reach for women smokers. The brand was famously pitched by Ronald Reagan, Lucille Ball and James Arness (Gunsmoke).  It was the brand of choice for James Bond and the first of countless smokes consumed by author Stephen King.

 

Nowadays, the brand is owned by Altria (manufactured by subsidiary Philip Morris USA) and after a brief hiatus was reintroduced to the US market in 2019 with filters - Gasp!  Philip Morris International supplies the rest of the world.

I grew-up with second hand smoke.  Unfiltered Chesterfields were my late, great mother's smoke of choice until my daughter was born 

Fast Fact: The inclusion of cigarettes in military rations did not officially end until 1975 as health concerns finally outweighed any lingering morale-boosting benefit.

Smoke 'em if you got 'em..... 

Billboard Twist

Messages on the side of the road have ranged from the historical humor of Burma-Shave, to modern safety warnings to Buckle-Up, Don't Text and Drive and Hands-Free Phone Use Only in Construction Zones.  There has even been spiritual guidance drawing on scripture to be attentive and show kindness to others on their journey.

Nowadays a trip on any stretch of Highway 29 is dominated by a couple of personal injury lawyers.  You know who. 

On the trip home from a South Dakota pheasant hunting trip there was this breath of fresh air....

State Highway 29 just east of Thorp; That's between the Wisconsin cities of Chippewa Falls and Wausau.

Happy Motoring.... 

The Most German Man In The World

The Most Interesting Man in the World was an advertising campaign for Dos Equis beer featuring actor Jonathan Goldsmith as a bearded, debonair older gentleman with voice overs that were both humorous and outrageous. The advertisements began appearing in the United States in 2006 and became a popular internet meme. 

Dos Equis retired the character in early 2016 with a tongue-in-cheek retirement ad launching him on a one-way trip to Mars. 

They briefly introduced a new male figure, Augustin Le Grand, but by 2018 fully shifted tone to the Keep It Interesante campaign—emphasizing storytelling from everyday people instead.

In March 2025, Dos Equis released a new hybrid AI ad that combines generative visuals with human creativity. Industry insiders praised its slickness — though some pointed out minor quirks like slightly unnatural hand movement.  Naturally, there's a beer tagline at the close.

You'll find a collection on YouTube - here's a sample...... 

Serving Suggestion

Molly Bee was an American country music singer and guitarist famous for her 1952 recording of the early perennial "I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus" and as Pinky Lee's sidekick on The Pinky Lee Show. 

Here she is pitching frozen hamburgers.

I ate my share of these growing-up in the 1960s and can vouch for the excess fat and shrinkage of these frozen hockey pucks.

Further evidence of the menu wasteland of my childhood; and prescient of the culinary renaissance that would emerge forty years later....

Fizzle

Growing-up in the early 1960s there is a childhood memory of a fascination of all things that went fizz without shaking-up a pop bottle and lifting the crown cap to release of volcano of soda flow. 

Sodaburst was an innovative instant ice cream soda mix introduced by Birds Eye in the 1950s and 1960s. Marketed as "the real ice cream soda that makes itself at home in one minute—cold," it offered a convenient way to enjoy a soda fountain-style treat at home. Each package contained a scoop of ice cream, flavored syrup, and soda fizz; consumers simply added water to create the beverage 

Available flavors included black and white (chocolate and vanilla), strawberry, pineapple, and all chocolate . Despite its novelty, Sodaburst was eventually discontinued, likely due to changing consumer preferences and market dynamics.

Seems like all that's left nowadays is Alka-Seltzer tummy and cold remedies... 

Homemade?

In the unlikely event that you have any doubts about the wasteland of culinary underachievement in the 1960s there is this.

And it's passed-off as homemade.... 

Not Child's Play

This is a real gem that YouTube suggested.

From likely fifty years ago.

Forgotten - now remembered.... 

Meet The Flintstones

Old school commercial.

"I hate to see them work so hard. " "Yea me too...let's go around back where we can't see them."

Have to wonder if the dinosaurs were eradicated as a consequence of second-hand smoke.....

Bad Breath

Before Tic-Tacs.

Cute commercial for Pep-O-Mint life savers. Ideal for smelling good on a first date and after a pile of cigarettes.

Seduction

I stumbled-across this blast from the past - sixty years ago to be exact. 

Growing-up my pop had a tube of this stuff on hand.  And I got to use a dab on school picture day!

According to this ad - Brylcreem can get men wanted, or unwanted, harassment from young ladies. If you do not follow directions, and you use TWO dabs of Brylcreem, the young ladies will ATTACK you.

If you're looking to seduce the town librarian two dabs will be just the ticket...