Lets talk about promotional items!
When I was a kid, we were at the tail end of supermarket giveaways and consumer products including bonus item, like your jelly coming in a Peanuts character drinking glass. But I do remember my Mom collecting a set of enamel cookware, where there was a different piece available each week if you spent a certain amount on groceries. We still occasionally got our sour cream in a glass with a big daisy stamped on it that would later be used for juice. But there was a time when this was a much more common practice, and in my humble opinion the “prizes” were way cooler.
Lets start with the mother of all promotional items, Depression Glass. It first appeared on the market in the mid 1920s, a few years before the start of The Great Depression, and once the lean times hit started being given out to customers at gas stations, movie theatres, and in bags of oats or detergent to stimulate sales. The new manufacturing process used to create it was fast and inexpensive, so glass companies like MacBeth-Evans, Jeannette, and Hazel Atlas (to name a few from a vast list) began producing beautiful patterns that mimicked more expensive wares for a fraction of the cost. We’re talking a teacup and saucer for the price of a loaf of bread, which would set you back a nickle. Or, better yet, a punch bowl and cups thrown in when you filled up your tank with gas!
Sometimes included in the category of Depression Glass is Jadeite, which has become very sought after (and pretty hard to find as a result). I can only dream of opening up a bag of flour to find a beautiful Jadeite teacup. And here I was thinking the coolest thing you could find in a cereal box was a Captain Crunch baking soda powered submarine! (Ok, yeah, that’s still pretty cool…)
Another favorite promotional item from the early 1940s is the beloved Hazel Atlas marmalade jar, which you could get for a whopping one cent with the purchase of Kix cereal. The ones most commonly found these days are the two tone apple and the strawberry, but there have been other versions of the apple found (I’m not sure if they are related to the promo or were just sold independently). Then there is the very rare (and super spendy if you see it for sale online) pineapple, which doesn’t appear in the promotional ad but is from around the same time. I frequently come across the aforementioned apple and strawberry in thrift stores for just a few dollars, but dream of finding the pineapple someday.
I should also mention that Kix offered a small cream pitcher around the same time that came in 4 different colors. These are also not terribly hard to find in thrift stores, though I do seem to come across the red one more often.
Now, we come to promotional drinking glasses, sometimes referred to as “swanky swigs”. These contained a range of things, from peanut butter to sour cream to cottage cheese…I do remember seeing these in my mom’s shopping cart as late as the 70s/early 80s, but they were more common from the 60s back to the 40s. There are definitely solid collectors markets for the peanut butter and sour cream glasses, with some patterns being very sought after, but the more common ones still pop up at thrift stores and flea markets. I often use the”lowball” sized ones in my collection for cocktails, but they’re also perfect for milk to accompany homemade cookies since they’re short with a wide top that you can easily dip that disk of buttery, chocolatey goodness into…mmm…
A sub-category of the swanky swigs would be the highly sought after and increasingly hard to find cottage cheese bowls, manufactured by Fire King and sold by Sealtest. There were 6 colors available of a simple tulip pattern on a milk glass bowl. I’ve also come across a ribbed, covered bowl put out by Breakstones that looks to be the right size for cottage cheese, the style of which suggests 1940s. Easier to find are the glass swirl bowls that once held Honey Whip spread, which are unmarked but I believe were manufactured by Glasbake.
I could probably dedicate a whole blog to the many cool promotional items that exist in the world of vintage collectables, but this is a good start. Now, I’m going to make a batch of chocolate chip cookies, grab a sour cream glass, and dream of spotting that elusive pineapple with a $1.99 sticker tucked away on a shelf at the Goodwill…