Wednesday, September 20, 2023

 

Selling It: Along The Milky Way

 




Today when you walk into a grocery store for a gallon of milk, and you're looking for just good old fashioned moo juice, you are generally greeted with the products of a single local dairy. Back in the day, though, there were often a cadre of smaller dairies competing for your business. Naturally these dairies advertised in your local paper, and sometimes they contracted with an ad agency that provided nice little eye-catchers like the panels above titled Along The Milky Way. 

I don't know which ad company sold Along The Milky Way, but they sure sold the heck out of it in the late 30s and 40s. The panels were drawn in a nice grease-pencil style by Gretchen Philips, who we met once before back in a 2007 post; she was the original artist on Style Smiles.

The earliest I can find Along The Milky Way appearing is in July 1939*, but according to a short article about Philips that ran in the Kearney Daily Hub (September 22 1939), she had been drawing the feature for two years by that point.

The panel seemed to be geared to approximately a weekly schedule, though of course once the backstock had built up the sky was the limit for an ambitious dairy. The last I see the panel being used is in 1948**, but that material could well have been years old by that time.  

There's an interesting postscript about this ad panel. Around March 1942 the panel gained a new subtitle, Dairy Tales, a new artist, a continuing cast of kids, and a very different style. Here's a sample:

The art was sometimes signed with a scrawl that looks like "Cobb", but my bet is that these panels are the work of Ferd Johnson, assistant/ghost on Moon Mullins. His fingerprints are all over that art. 

Why the panel got such an extreme makeover is anyone's guess, but it apparently didn't go down too well with many of the dairies buying the ads. Some dairies stopped running the panel and others used or re-used Gretchen Philips panels. The Dairy Tales version of the panel came and went like a flash -- the latest I can find it running is in May 1942. 

UPDATE: Since this post ran I have found that the Dairy Tales panel was original sold in 1937-38 by National Features, or The Amsterdam Syndicate (both are credited on the promos I just unearthed). Maybe these old panels were sold off to the marketers of Along The Milky Way, where they got a short new lease on life. The original versions of the panels are distinctly signed with a stylized 'f', exactly the one used by Ferd Johnson in his sig, so case closed on the artist ID.


* Source: Indiana Evening Gazette, Hanover Sun.

** Source: Palm Beach Post.

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# posted by Allan Holtz @ 6:00 AM
Comments:
On Monday we had angry badgers. Today, it's Badger Milk! What did they do? Herd badgers around all day, and then line them up in their stalls in late afternoon, attach hoses to their little teats, and pump 'em dry? I wonder how the nutrition profile of badger milk compares with soy milk, almond milk, dandelion milk, kelp milk, and all the others which are available today. I hear that wolverine milk is the best, but the wolverine milkers get torn to shreds on a regular basis. You think angry badgers are bad — try getting on the wrong side of an angry wolverine!
# posted by Anonymous Katherine Collins : 9/20/2023 9:54 AM
 
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