The WGY Food Stores

Photo: Hoxie!

If there's one thing that pairs up with a great cup of coffee, it's great radio. And for a few glorious decades from the 1930s to the 1950s, people in the Capital Region of New York got both from the legendary WGY Radio.

WGY is one of the pioneering radio stations in America. Broadcasting continuously since 1922, it was home to many firsts in broadcasting, including the first remote broadcasts, the first radio dramas, the first high powered broadcasts, the first experimental TV station and one of the very first FM radio stations, among them. It's local reputation as a media powerhouse also lent itself to some unusual diversifications.

With the blessing of WGY's ownership (General Electric), WGY Food Stores was launched in the 1920s.

How WGY entered the grocery business isn't like how you would expect. WGY Radio itself never directly handled the grocery business. Instead, they licensed their "brand" (i.e. their call letters) to a local distributor and chain operator for a cut of the profits or a set fee.

This arrangement, plus the chain's whopping 130 stores in the full blast of it's signal (a full 75 miles around Schenectady!), gave both operators an advantage. The grocer had an instantly identifiable brand and the radio station had instant free advertising and a great promotional asset.

Because radio was a marvel for people in the 1920s and it's tie-in with anything sold well.

Photo: Hoxie!

Though best known for it's coffee (as evidenced by the many WGY coffee tins that circulate in the antique underground) WGY Food Stores also offered other branded products, such as canned evaporated milk (as mentioned in the ad above), fruits and vegetables, spices and tea. There were likely other WGY branded products as well.

WGY was still operating in the grocery business as late as 1958. But with the 1960s came the first waves of distributor consolidation and grocery stores became supermarkets. But the WGY stores seemed to be smaller stores, which were fading away to the supermarkets.

WGY Coffee jar, 1940-50s

But WGY could be considered the Amazon of it's day. It's one of the earliest examples of how one could get both their staples and entertainment from the same source (in name.)

Today, WGY has been long out of the grocery business. But still broadcasting to to the Capital Region.

A Random Gallery of Vintage Menus

Warner Bros. Studio Commissary Menu, 1960

Early Chili's menu, 1979

 

Alcatraz Prison Menu, 1946

The Cotton Club, New York City, 1930s

Post Bran And Prune Flakes

Obviously, this stuff wasn't for the kids,

In fact, it's been a long time since prunes were popular in any configuration. When I was growing up, only senior citizens ate prunes. I knew of no one younger than 60 that ate them. One elderly neighbour lady introduced me to these things. They tasted gross to me. She went on and on about how much she always ate prunes in her youth. I guess that's why they called it "The Depression".

So I don't think many younger folks even know what they are today. I never liked them personally (just the name "prune" conjures up nursing home kitchen fodder) and I don't see them in many stores these days. Once in a while, maybe.

Post Bran & Prune Flakes was truly a "grown-up" product of it's time. No crazy mascots, awesome prizes or flavour gimmickry in these boxes. Just a plain, middle of the road cereal for middle age and older.

   
Introduced in the late 1950s, Post Bran & Prune Flakes were popular with the Geritol crowd during the '60s. But sales began sliding off by the latter half of the decade. They were discontinued in 1972.

Hotel and Restaurant Menus of the 1850s and 1860s

More here: Hotel And Restaurant Menus of The 1850s and 1860s

Kellogg's Kream Krunch Cereal

Ad copy above reads  "Now - Ice Cream in a nourishing cereal. Crisp chunks of real ice cream (freeze-dried) right in with the good grain. The kids won't believe it. (Maybe you won't either!) But thanks to freeze-drying, we've taken the cold out of ice cream, made it crisp and crunch, so it keeps without refrigeration right in a package of cereal. And what a cereal! A crisp, nourishing blend of hearty corn, wheat and oats that's a treat by itself. With the ice cream it's... well taste it see for yourself. At your grocer's now."

It really seemed like a good idea.

If anything gets the kids bugging their parents to the point of insanity in the cereal aisle, it's a cereal that contains something they really like. Raisins? Yuk. What kid really liked raisins in anything?

And all kids love ice cream. Especially that then-new freeze-dried space ice cream the astronauts get to eat that everyone on TV was talking about back then.

Soooooo, Kellogg's executives thought they had a winner in their new cereal, Kream Krunch. It was a Cheerios type cereal with bits of freeze dried ice cream in Strawberry, Vanilla and Orange flavours (though surprisingly, Kream Krunch didn't have a chocolate flavour.)

But ice cream for breakfast...Was America an awesome place in 1965 or what?

And it really did sound good.....But that's as far as Kream Krunch got. The flipside was the freeze-dried ice cream melted into a super gross, sticky goo after sitting in milk for a few minutes, so you had to eat it fast or without milk. (I eat my cereal dry with a glass of milk on the side to wash it down - That's how passionately I hate soggy cereal.)

Parents complained to Kellogg's, demanding refunds because when the freeze dried ice cream melted, kids would stop eating the cereal. And soon, they wouldn't touch the box at all and it would have to be thrown out. Kream Krunch was discontinued in 1966. And Kellogg's (or any other cereal company) never attempted another freeze-dried ice cream cereal.

Kellogg's Just Right Cereal

Kellogg's Just Right cereal was introduced in the USA in 1985. My mom bought a box and I remember us trying this, only getting a few bites in until we had to dump the rest of our bowls into the trash. It was nasty.

My peers in high school had the same opinion and we called it Just Sucks. The cereal was basically a fruitcake in a box. It had bran flakes, corn flakes, dates, raisins, almond bits and oats and pretty much targeted at the yuppie bunch.

This cereal had a massive ubiquitous TV advertising campaign for it (perhaps the largest I had ever seen for a cereal) and discount offers that moms of that time couldn't resist. But everyone under the age of 30 hated this commercial as much as the cereal because it was guaranteed to pop up at least 4 times an hour during daytime TV, it was nearly as bad during prime time and late at night too in 1985. It was everywhere on every channel.

But unbeknownst to the rest of us, this commercial would ironically be the launch pad for the career of one of the biggest pop stars of the '90s.


(For years, I thought Tori Amos' 1994 hit "Cornflake Girl" was her way of venting her angst over this commercial and the disgusting taste of that cereal that never seemed to go away. An interpretive sort of thing. But that wasn't the case. The interpretive venting over this disgusting cereal was probably Y Kant Tori Read.) 

Just Right cereal was discontinued in America in the early '90s, but it's still sold in Australia.

   

Danka Toaster Pastries

Danka was a tragically named breakfast pastry for toasters that existed in the late 1960s and early '70s.


From the advertising, Danka was for your square, sensible middle aged person who wanted their toaster pastries to do more than pop up. (Well, what do you want them to do then? Your taxes?)

Pass The Buc Wheats....

Buc Wheats were a maple flavoured cereal that was very popular in the '70s. However in the early '80s, they switched the flavouring from maple to honey (probably to compete with newer, trendier honey flavoured cereals in the early '80s.) And sales plummeted. It just tasted AWFUL without the maple flavour.

Unfortunately, instead of reverting back to the classic formula and saving the brand, General Mills discontinued Buc Wheats altogether in 1984.

Christmas Tinner

 If you just can't put down the game controller of the PS4 or X-Box One Santa (may) bring you for Christmas, I have GREAT news.

Layer one – Scrambled egg and bacon
Layer two – Two mince pies
Layer three – Turkey and potatoes
Layer four – Gravy
Layer five – Bread sauce
Layer six – Cranberry sauce
Layer seven – Brussel sprouts with stuffing – or broccoli with stuffing
Layer eight – Roast carrots and parsnips
Layer nine – Christmas pudding

No need to break out the "good" dishes, just eat it right out of the can! (But then again, when your idea of interior decorating include fake bookshelf wallpaper, who needs formality?)

 Sadly for the rest of us, it's only available in the UK.... And completely SOLD OUT this year.....

http://www.game.co.uk/en/game-christmas-tinner-181968?pageSize=20&categoryIdentifier=10210

Pizza Snacks

 

 

And who could forget these?

Reddi-Bacon

 

In the late '70s, the makers of Reddi-Wip had a GREAT idea.

It looked promising (they DID invent the spray whipped topping.) Bacon in minutes without the messy clean up.

These foil wrapped packets of goodness were a godsend. But, there WERE problems. The packets tended to leak hot grease, creating an instant fire hazard and a disgusting mess in your toaster. Often, you had to throw out the toaster.

Eventually, this idea would be revisited again with pre-cooked microwavable bacon in the late '80s. 

Forgotten Breakfast Cereals

Here's three long forgotten breakfast cereals. One very cool, one very weird and one that should never have seen a table:

Croonchy Stars: Undisputedly the most wacky breakfast cereal box to ever grace a table. The Muppets' Swedish Chef got his own line of cereal in the late '80s with Croonchy Stars. The whole box was covered in wackiness: "No Artificial Colours, No Doorknobs". On the side of the box: "Table Of Contents: Place Contents On Table"

Punch Crunch: This cereal didn't last long in the late '70s. Because even in that more innocent age. many stores refused to stock it and many parents were upset about it because of the gaudy pink box and the even gaudier pink hippo in the sailor suit making googly eyes at the Captain (and God only knows what it was doing with it's left arm.)

Urkel-Os: This cereal should NEVER have happened. Whoever came up with the idea of turning the ANNOYING Steve Urkel of the TV show Family Matters into a cereal probably hasn't worked in promotions since. Secondly, the strawberry/banana flavouring was just AWFUL. The tastes just CLASH in the bowl. Which is probably why this cereal too disappeared soon after it was introduced.......