Grape-Nuts, the cereal whose ingredients include neither grapes nor nuts, tastes like tree bark and will chip teeth if you don't let it soak in milk for an hour before choking it down. So imagine yourself as a Madison Avenue ad-man finding out that you're supposed to convince people to buy this stuff. Once you realize that New York skyscraper windows don't open and you can't escape the assignment through timely death, you accept that you actually have to come up with an ad campaign to sell war surplus shrapnel as food.
Since you are one of those rare admen who has a conscience, you don't cook up a campaign claiming that this boxed gravel comes out the other end as gold bars. No, you do what desperate advertisers do when they want to make consumers buy a truly awful product -- you ignore the product entirely and merely associate it with something people do like. In the case of Grape-Nut Flakes, the ad-man called on one of the most well-liked fellows in Hollywood, Joe E. Brown, to shill for this goop.
Brown was a major Hollywood star, and in the 1930s was instantly recognizeable to anyone living outside a hermit's cave. He was funny, he was friendly, and his image was squeaky clean. And best of all, his stardom in 1936 was starting to teeter a bit, and so he was open to the idea of plastering his puss all over the nation's newspapers, even if it was to sell horse-feed to humans.
The Joe E. Brown Grape-Nuts Club was advertised in 1936 with a series of about a half-dozen or so comic strips that appeared both in colour Sunday comics sections and in black-and-white weekday paper editions. The ads offered a lapel pin, plus photo or ring, to any kid who could convince their parents to buy a single box. But of course once the kids were in the club, presumably more goodies would be offered in exchange for additional box tops.
The art is very nice, and my guess is that it is provided by Darrell McClure. However, I do notice that the faces often have a decided Milton Caniff flavour to them, even if the rest of the art doesn't reflect that sensibility particularly. So c'mon you art-spotters, offer your opinions. Are we looking at Caniff, McClure, or am I way out in the weeds here?
Hello Allan- The way you describe poor old Grape-Nuts leads me to believe you've had some sort of harrowing, life changing experience with them, or you're secretly in the employ of Kellogg's.
ReplyDeleteThere's lots of other famous faces employed as cartoon spokesmen, polluting depression era comic sections, including Dizzy Dean, Buck Jones, Jack Benny, Lou Gehrig, even Our Gang did pitches. Then there were long series with real life personalities like Melvin Purvis or Frank Hawks, which you might think trivialises whatever seriousness they expected to have in said real life.
There is a touch of Caniff in the above strips, but Caniff DID do ad comics for some products, "Ben-Gay" being one, and other big name cartoonists moonlighted in the dark shadows of ad strips, like Afonsky doing "Ol' Judge Robbins" for Prince Albert, and Bil Dwyer for "Nestle's Nest".
But . . . but . . . but Allan, I used to LIKE Grape-Nuts. And I bet I still would if I could find them. The strange texture is a big part of their appeal. You can use them to scour the inside of your mouth, and I mean that kindly. The flavour is unique, but I'd need to have some again to conjour up the words. So watch your words, bud!
ReplyDeleteAs for Joe E. Brown, you didn't mention his extra wide mouth. Great Honk! But these strips do depict his kind nature, and great resourcefulness. Have you ever heard of Clark Gable stopping a runaway horse? Did John Wayne ever combine peaches and Grpe Nuts out on Martin's Farm. Did Wayne ever even go out there? You can see that Joe E. spends his time hanging around the grocery store on Main Street, too! A reg'lar feller!
As a crunchy granola fan, I also have a soft spot for that hard cereal. But Grape-Nuts Flakes are different. Same flavor but in regular get-soggy-in-milk flake format. I knew that the movie mentioned at the bottom, "Earthworm Tractor" was based on a series of short stories from the Saturday Evening Post. I didn't realize there were over 100 of those stories though.
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ReplyDeleteIt wasn't "Ben Gay" that Caniff did the ads for-it was Postum. I somehow confused in my mind the ad strip bad guys "Mr. Coffee Nerves" for "Peter Pain", the weird little sadist in the Ben Gay ads of the 1940s.
Joe E.Brown inspired a lot of Daws Butler's voiced,most notably Lippy the Lion (1962) and (VERY heavily amplified) PETER..POTAMUS (1963-1966).Steve J>C
ReplyDeleteAnother comic advertiser for Grape Nuts would be Canada's Jimmie Frise, also from this period in the mid-1930s. He had a whole series based on the character "Ernie Energy" because of all the pep you get from eating them. Some can be seen at my site here: https://gregandjim.ca/?s=grape+nuts
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