Excitable Media: Three Cylindrical Containers

Whereby, either through coincidence or nostalgia for breakfast, I steel myself determined to delve into the odd convergence of three foodstuffs and their history-laden packaging. Bear with me, and I think you too will be struck by the uncanny dignity of American canning.

Ever since I bought a newfangled alarm clock I've been a man of strict routine. Case in point, my daily breakfast never varies: a bowl of oatmeal, piping hot, two cups of coffee, and a whole heap of salt to kick it down. The salt goes on the oatmeal, by the way, not in the coffee, though a few years back I happened to pour salt in my coffee and it's not undrinkable. Regardless, just yesterday I was again seated at the breakfast table listening to the neighbor's dog, a big black beast, lame, blind and deaf, that materializes in my kitchen window each morning, limping through the backyard and greeting the sun with

The First QOQ

barks filled with pain, a tragic scene to say the least, and I realized that all my breakfast food comes in cylindrical containers. Here's the way it happened: I had sleepily put the Quaker Oatmeal lid onto the Chock Full o' Nuts can, and I only realised much later that it didn't matter because the wrong lid fit like a glove. The cans are well nigh identical, at least in circumference, and when you include vital condiments, i.e. Morton Salt w/EZ-pour spout, you've got yourself a trifecta of geometric containment.

Not even yours truly is old enough to remember the dawn of the Quaker Oatmeal Quaker, and like most American kiddies I was spoon fed this guy's mug from birth, so much so that the Quaker's smile dangling from the brim of his William Penn hat is my first tangible memory. I don't know about you but I wasn't the least surprised to find there's nothing Quaker about Quaker Oatmeal, and he's an early example of shameless religious exploitiation, a topic a propos given this week's release of Mel Gibson's new Christ movie, which by the way I'll probably see more than once, but as it turns out, the Oatmeal people and the Quakers, a.k.a. the Society of Friends, have developed an neo-Darwinian symbiotic relationship, each milking the other's public image like an old-fashioned celebrity marriage. We need only ask: Would the Quakers be such a dominant political and religious force today if it weren't for the ubiquitous Oatmeal? On the other hand, for whatever reason, similar religious marketing schemes haven't panned out. Neither Jew Flakes nor The Box of Latter Day Flapjacks ever really caught on with the general public, though fossilized remains can still be found in small museums and smaller general stores. If I were pressed I'd say it was the Quaker's distinctive hat, even in spite of the dismal failure of Pope-brand Frozen Tacos.

QOQ III and QOQ Jr.

Now some history: Quaker Oats was born in Chicago, Illinois, the king of company towns, and was the end product of an industrial revolution in grain production that had swept the 19th century agrarian breakbasket from Omaha to Indianapolis. Having consolidated mass-production, the next step was developing mass-consumption and mass-distribution networks, which meant only one thing to the Chicago grain barons: advertising. Thus 1877 found a group of grain companies placing the image of The Quaker on their package, holding a scroll marked with the word "PURE," and a model of industrial progress was born.

Success came quickly for the Quaker Oatmeal Quaker, the first nationally marketed artificial foodstuff mascot in history, and he spawned countless emulators, from Aunt Jemimah to the Domino's Noid to Paul Newman. Strangely enough, at first the Quaker Oatmeal box was square, until changes in ergonomic theory made it possible to switch to cylindrical oatmeal containment in 1915. In 1947 the Quaker was redrawn, brought into the 20th century, originally in pure black and white until color was added in 1957. And for some reason, probably having to do with the sweep of cultural change, the Quaker was updated again in 1972. Don't be shocked, but Quaker Oatmeal Quaker the Third is only thirty-two years old. (He looks older . . .)

I have the personal privledge to know a Quaker or two, but I've yet to ask them if they eat Quaker Oatmeal. You see, while they're remarkable listeners, Quakers are a fairly sensitive lot and I'm relcutant to gauge too closely their Oatmeal temperament. But my oatmeal advice is this: Don't fall for the instant oatmeal trap. Standing before the supermarket grain shelf and looking down at the two smiling Quaker cylinders, one marked "Instant! One Minute" and the other "Original. Five Minute," go for the latter and you'll thank yourself later. If you took out your TI-85 and plotted Morning Time Available vs. Taste Differential, I think you'd find, as I did, that the Original Oatmeal is well worth the wait. On the other hand, don't make it with milk. The box-back directions do offer you the choice, but I've found it very

Do Japanese get the QOQ?

difficult to make milk-based oats w/out turning the kitchen into a reenactment of what Mrs. O'Leary's cow must have felt like after the Great Chicago fire had been raging for a while. What I mean is, the milk heats up, half-solidifies, and bubbles over the pot onto the stove. Take it from me, it turns the oatmeal pot into an awful mess. If I had a Quaker convert for each time I've burned my breakfast Oatmeal making it with milk, I'd have a quorum.

The upside to oatmeal is that it's healthy, but the downside is that Oatmeal tastes pretty darn bad, which explains the golden rule of oatmeal: The Condiment Imperative, something they know well at Denny's, where if you order a bowl they make sure to bring you three things: a pitcher of milk, and bowls of brown sugar and raisins. But me, I'm a bit old fashoined, with antique tastes, and invariably I have to beckon back my waitress and demand salt. I eat my oatmeal with salt so that you don't have to.

Morton Salt

The umbrella girl

The roots of the Morton Salt company trace back to 1848, when a group of agents for the Onondaga Salt Interest got together in Chicago to usher in a new era of salt distribution. They called themselves Richmond & Company until a daunting figure named Joy Morton, the governor's son, bought a controlling interest and renamed the business after himself. So it went for half a century.

By the end of the Victorian era, the Morton establishment knew they had broken new ground. At the time the one nagging saline contaiment problem was "clumping," the fact that whenever the humidity reached a certain threshold great balls of salt would form inside the containment cylinder, and as any food service provider knows, it's one of the most frustrating things in the world to pour clumps through small preforations. But crafty Morton engineers discovered that if you added magnesium carbonate into mix, salt would pour even in the most humid of climes. Their knew their salt innovation would change the world, and the company felt that it was time to claim a distinctive brand identity.

Saline contanment device

Thus they decided to launch a marketing campaign worthy of the Quaker Oatmeal Quaker, and the hot summer of 1910 found the Morton salt marketing team sitting in their black suits around a conference table, brainstorming names and slogans for their cutting edge brand. Young George Harriman suggested the first slogan, "Even in rainy weather, it flows freely," but the committee thought it too cumbersome, despite or perhaps because of its clear statement of the facts. The group worked through the night, sculpting and molding their syntax. Phrases like "flows freely" and "runs freely" hung in the air like cartoon ballons, but all were rejected due to urination connotations. Finally Young Harriman came through again, pulling out from his think pot his grandmother's salty old adage, "It never rains, but it pours." At last they had a winner, or so they believed . . .

The team pitched the slogan to old man Morton the very next day, beading sweat while he mulled it over, watching as he pulled three times at his handlebar mustache before emitting his famous retort: "Too negative. A revolution demands positivity." Heads nodded quickly in agreement, and the brain trust went back to work, coming up with the enduringly upbeat slogan that still appears today: "When it rains, it pours." The ad campaign went national the next month in Good Housekeeping magazine, the slogan placed alongside an illustration of a young girl holding an umbrella, and a salt legend was born.

Today's girl, full of whimsy

That much is certain, but the more pertinent question, the reason why the Morton girl is so recklessly pouring salt onto the ground, is one of salt's great mysteries. At the time salt was a precious commodity, and to pour it evenly onto the ground was considered lunacy, a sure sign of madness. Surely the girl's inscrutable expression provides no clue: Whether she is thinking of chocolate, mulling a musical ditty, or reliving a long forgotten memory is irrevelant, but if the weather in the girl's world is anything like the weather in Saint Paul today, I say she's pouring salt onto the sidewalk in order to melt the walkway ice for passers-by to come. Next time you drizzle salt onto the stoop steps, glance down at your salt containment bag; chances are you'll find the Morton Umbrella Girl standing there, dancing gently to some internal melody. O! Salt spirit, you walk before me, braving the slips and stumbles of the ice-caked cobblestones so that I may walk in peace alongside my kin and all their roommates, our feet planted firmly on the ground. Lead us, Salt Girl, as we walk rainclouded into history.

Chock Full O' Nuts Coffee

Oatmeal? Salt? I'm kidding myself. We all know that breakfast is just an excuse for coffee, and my coffee of choice for years now has been Chock Full o' Nuts (CFON) coffee, a brand I've been drinking ever since college when the NYC skyline printed on their tin can pulled me towards it like flies to a porch lamp, and I've been orbiting Planet CFON ever since.

CFON cylinders, old and new

Just Seinfeld's bit about Grape Nuts, there are no nuts to be found in CFON. The odd name traces back in fact to the humble beginnings as a nut store, started on the corner of Broadway and 43rd Street in 1932 by a man with the fabulous name of William Black. But in a case of Bill Black's bad timing, the hard times of the Great Depression cut nut consumption almost in half, and ever flexible, CFON changed into a coffee shop and expanded outward, Starbucksing themselves into the dominant NYC coffee player, with the five boroughs boasting over 100 stores by 1950. CFON demand grew so quickly that by the mid 50's, the company decided to go national with their own line of cylindrically canned coffee. Taking a page from the religious connotations of the Quaker playbook, they launched what would become a famous national marketing campaign. Their famed jingle:

Chock Full O' Nuts is the heavenly coffee, heavenly coffee, heavenly coffee…Better coffee a millionaire's money can't buy."

The jingle, along with the coffee can's widely recognized taxi-cab coloring, was developed by a Chicago advertising firm, BBDO. Now I couldn't begin tell you why Chicago is the home to so many cylindrical containment landmarks, perhaps it's the flat flat landscape, the way in which the Lake Michigan shore arcs through Wisconsin, Indiana, and Michigan, or the lasting influence of Mr. Ferris's wheel, but whatever the reason the Chicagoans have been on the cutting edge of marketable canning.

New York's most obvious consequence of the boom boom 90's is the dramatic procreation of NY Starbuckses, which went from a mere dozen Manhattan stores in 1994 to over 250 five years later. They're now the largest chain of any kind in the 5 boroughs, and at certain coffee-dense places, for example the [village station on the 4/5 line…], you can go into a Starbucks, sit down with a coffee, and watch people enter and exit the Starbucks across the street. All this coffeefication inspired the good folks at CFON, and they've recently

CFON's current ad campaign

started trying to compete with the Seattle carpetbaggers, opening a number of stores throughout the city and posting a new series of ads that proclaim their coffee, "Full of NY Flavor." Having lived there and worked in the Manhattan food service industry, I know know the full meaning of "NY Flavor," and so I'm a bit skeptical about the possibility of a CFON resurrection, but I can only say, Best of Luck, CFON. Give it the good ol' college try.

Cylindrical Conclusions

It's long been a staple food of my imagination to think about how advertising, more than anything else, is the hallmark of cultural change in this country. Art or literature, which often claim to demarcate the age, seem to easily leap across generation gaps, i.e. you can read Fitzgerald without straing yourself, people still watch M*A*S*H every night, movies from the 70's can still seem current, and most visual art seems not to have aged much in the past 50 years. We can appreaciate all these media without feeling a particularly heavy dose of culture shock, but the pace of change in the advertising world is more rapid, and ads from even a few years ago feel antiquated and obsolete. It's advertising, even more than fashion, that throws our ever-changing cultural zeitgeist into full relief, and perhaps that explains the often eerie feeling you get in older urban districts. For example Saint Paul's University Avenue, which hasn't changed appreciably since they put in the freeway, makes me almost giddy, and walking along this old-school main street provides ample example of nostaligic signage, like the store that declares in simple blue and white, "Saint Paul Meats," or the giant Sears store that time forgot.

In the same way, these three cylindrical remnants of ancient advertising campaigns are remarkable. The Morton's "Rains it pours" slogan and the "Nuts" in CFON have lost all of their original meaning, and now stick out surrealistically from our grocery shelves. And the fact that they're becoming popular again, at least in the cases of CFON and PBR, while it might eventually kill the authenticity, is also doing a great deal to ressurect some sort of American historical sensiblity. But at least for now, you can still eat and drink the past for breakfast.