In Your Grocer’s Freezer #socs

Stream of Consciousness Saturday 1 Minute

First, a short video by my buddy Pete Kastanes, who has lots of videos and advertisements from stores that no longer exist in the Chicago area. A few of them are highlighted in the video:

It seems not long ago that there were many more ads on prime time TV about food items and cleaners that you could buy at your local grocery store. Daytime TV was loaded with them. Now it seems like prime time ads are mostly for cars and pharmaceuticals and daytime ads are for lawyers and trade schools.

I spent a lot of time in grocery stores (more correctly supermarkets, but that’s not a word with roc in it) when I lived at home. Mom would send me to the store with a list, and I’d buy whatever was on it. It always took me a little longer to do the shopping, because I’d get distracted looking at all the products that I had seen on TV and in the newspaper ads, just wondering what all the fuss was about. What made this cleaner better than that one, or this dessert tastier and those TV dinners more nutritious? And what kind of things could I find that seemed just a little strange to find in a grocery store?

Amazing how easily amused I was…

Stream of Consciousness Saturday is brought to you each week by Linda Hill and this station. Now a word about Pabst Blue Ribbon beer. So much better for so little more!

Published by John Holton

Internet disc jockey, lover of old TV (especially the commercials), inveterate wise guy.

Published

20 thoughts on “In Your Grocer’s Freezer #socs”

  1. My husband does most of the cooking in our house, so he does the shopping. If I ever go with him, we always overspend because I fill the trolley with chocolate and biscuits! (Or the cart with cookies, if you prefer…)

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    1. I know all about cookies being called “biscuits” in England. I think it was Winston Churchill who said that Americans and Britons are two people divided by the same language. I’m the same way: “Ooh, banana ceam pie! And Klondike Bars!” My knees are so bad, Mary goes by herself…

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  2. As kids, we didn’t get to go along grocery shopping. That was Mom’s job and she went alone. We did get a say in what treats to buy, mainly malted milk powder and ice cream to make drinks for watching Friday evening television shows like Gunsmoke. My aunt worked as a check-out clerk in the local store and once she and Mom were chatting and she got short-changed $20. Later, my aunt’s till came out $20 over so everything worked out okay. But $20 in the 50s was a lot of money.

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    1. $20 was a day’s wages in the ’50’s. Good thing it all got straightened out.

      By the time I came around, “Gunsmoke” aired on Sunday nights. I think, during its run, it aired just about every night of the week, and for a while they did reruns under the title “Marshall Dillon.” This was a surprise to me: James Arness and Peter Graves from “Mission: Impossible” were brothers…

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  3. I tend to get overwhelmed in big supermarkets, especially if they are crowded or have fluorescent lights. Having a list helps. The music in your first video, however, was wonderfully soothing.

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    1. Like the song? Pete says it’s “A Heart Must Learn To Cry by Marty Gold & His Orchestra.”

      I don’t like crowded stores, either, so I would go on a weeknight, except for Friday. When we lived in Chicago, I’d go Saturday night. I discovered that it was a hangout for single women looking to meet a guy… I’m talking the hair, the makeup, the cleavage, the skintight pants, and enough Enjoli to perfume the whole store. One such woman spent one evening bumping into me. I finally told her I was married. It only got worse….

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      1. Sounds like the beginning of an interesting story. When I was single again, I went to Barnes and Nobles on Saturday night. Nothing exciting happened.

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        1. The only thing that was more interesting was the time I was in Pierre, South Dakota, hanging around with some of the people who worked at the State (the client I was seeing). One of them says, “hey, it’s Ladies’ Night at (some bar), let’s go dancing.” When we got there, there were a bunch of trucks parked outside. When we walked into the place, I discovered the ladies were the ones who drove the trucks there. As weird as it felt, it was a great time…

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  4. Just shows how influential advertising really is. It is interesting how you checked it all out in the store. Nice post on a little slice of your life.

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  5. here too there were so many good ads, they were fun. But now so much has changed. But the AMUL ad is as good as ever.
    Amul Advertisement – Simple and Consistent Brand Strategy – …
    kuhipaat.in/blogs/2017/01/15/amul-ads-simple-consistent-strategy

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    1. Putting those ads together was an art form, trying to get as much information on one page as they could. We had two broadsheet and two tabloid newspapers in Chicago, and getting the ad to look the same and still be readable was tricky.

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  6. That’s a long list of grocery stores that have gone the way of the dinosaur. Kroger is the only one familiar to me. I miss Kroger and Albertsons. The meat market section with the store especially. Everything is prepackaged these days.

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    1. They’re all consolidating. In the Chicago area, there were two big ones when I left, Jewel and Dominick’s. Jewel was bought by Albertsons and is still there, but Dominick’s was bought by Safeway and closed down. Here in Atlanta, we’ve had two chains close, Winn-Dixie and Harris Teeter, which are still both alive, just not in Atlanta. Kind of sad, really.

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