Cap’n Crunch cereal

Introduced in 1963 by Quaker Oats, the popular breakfast treat had kid appeal written all over it.  Cap’n Crunch was created when kid’s cereals were flourishing and for some reason it made sense that a cartoon naval captain would sell a breakfast food.

Pamela Low who developed the original taste of the cereal based it in recipe her grandma made. She recalling a recipe of brown sugar and butter her grandmother Luella Low served over rice at her home in Derry, New Hampshire.

It’s advertised with amusing animated TV spots created by Jay Ward and starring Cap’n Horatio Crunch - the fun loving, blue-uniformed sea captain of the S.S. Guppy.

Despite its unusual taste, the Cap’n has inspired more spin-offs than Happy Days. Cap’n Crunch’s Crunch Berries debuted in 1967, followed by Cap’n Crunch’s Peanut Bitter Crunch in 1969, and in what may be a sign of the apocalypse, Cap’n Crunch’s Chocó Donuts in 2002.

The cereal logo character Cap’n Crunch was based on an actual figure from history, Captain James Crunch, an infamous slave trader who as brutally murdered in a brothel in 1792.
Captain Crunch cereal

German Mills American Oatmeal Company

In 1850, Ferdinand Schumacher, a German settler, opened a grocery store in Akron, Ohio. His major customers were German and Irish immigrants, and they bought a lot of oats.

He started the cereals turnaround in 1854 with a hand grains grinder in the back area of his not so large store, which produced 20 180-Ib barrels of oatmeal daily with a water-powered stone mill. His plan was to introduce steel-cut oats to the American diet at a time when oats were considered inappropriate for anything but horses.

His German Mills American Oatmeal Company was the nation’s foremost profit-oriented gruel producer. Sales were brisk, particularly to cities with large immigrant populations so Schumacher opened additional mills to meet the increasing demand in 1883.

In 1877, Schumacher embraced the Quaker sign the foremost recorded brand for a morning meal breakfast food.

In 1878 Schumacher imported porcelain rollers from England to manufacture rolled oats.

In the early of 1860s, during the Civil War, the government found oats to be relatively inexpensive, accessible and nourishing and ordered hundreds of barrels from him to fortify the Union troops.

When the war ceased in 1865, oats were becoming an increasingly familiar commodity on American breakfast tables. German Mills American Oatmeal Company would later merge several times with other companies, with the result being the Quaker Oats Company.
German Mills American Oatmeal Company

Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix

Aunt Jemima pancake flour is the first nationally distributed ready-mix food and one of the earliest products to be marketed through personal appearances and advertisements featuring its namesakes.

In 1889, Charles Rutt and Chris Underwood founded the Pearl Milling Company.

They created the first ready-mixed pancake flour. Charles Rutt chose Aunt Jemima as advertising’s first living trademark.

The product was originally named ‘Self-Rising Pancake Flour’ and sold in bags. In the fall of 1889 Rutt was inspired to rename the mix after attending a minstrel show during which a popular song titled ‘Old Aunt Jemima’ was performed by men in blackface, one of whom was depicting a slave mammy of plantation South.

In 1890 Aunt Jemima Manufacturing Company replaced Pearl Milling Company. Chris Underwood’s brother Bert was responsible for registering the Aunt Jemima trademark.

The Pearl Company had been in financial trouble and their owners were forced, in 1893 to sell their new pancake formula to a larger corporation owned by R.G Davis of Chicago.

Davis promoted both product and image; in the same year the company hired 59 year-old Nancy Green, and African American woman who was a cook for a Chicago judge, to dress in gingham, apron and head bandana to demonstrate their new Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix.

The Davis Company prospered and by 1910, the name of Aunt Jemima was known in all 48 states and had attained such popularity that many people tried to infringe on the trademark rights.

In 1914, the image of Aunt Jemima was so popular that the company was renamed the Aunt Jemima Mill Company.

In 1926 Aunt Jemima Mills Company was sold to Quaker Oats Company for over four million dollars. The image of ‘Aunt Jemima’ remained on the packages.
Aunt Jemima Pancake Mix