Lesser known brands

In my ceaseless trolling for crate label art I’ve occasionally been stopped in my tracks by a label that’s so unusual, or so JPW (just plain weird) that I have to wonder: What the hell were the makers thinking?

The height of  the  crate label art heyday  lasted from the 1920’s through the 1950’s.  Obviously our perceptions about certain images and phrases can change with time. For example, today if I heard about a product calling itself “White Chick brand”, I think I might expect a movie tie-in kind of deal, maybe with one or more Wayanses, in whiteface, on the label. Also, if I hear “Bimbo brand melons”, a freckle faced country boy with a fishing pole is really not the first image that pops into my head.

Apart from the misfires caused by mutating pop cultural references, some of these concepts had to have been real clunkers right from the get-go.  I mean, even back in the 20’s did anyone really want to eat Scary Evil Clown apples? No wonder the kid in the next row is bawling; he’s terrified. Or who ever  lusted after Capital Gains vegetables?  (Yeah, yeah, I know: Republicans. Talk about jokes writing themselves.)

I don’t care how much you may love Orson Welles and postwar Vienna and all that damned zither music.  Would that be enough to make you want to buy Der 3rd Mann oranges? Even when Der 3rd Mann inexplicably appears to have a large goatse on his forehead? Okay, so maybe the whole goatse thing didn’t exist back in the late ’40s.   Don’t those big red ripples or rays or whatever the heck they are emanating from the guy’s head look just a little odd?  And anyway if it’s a Der 3rd Mann label shouldn’t it be about limes?

I’m sure the rabid local reich wingers will be thrilled to see the Red Star label. (Now watch them deliver it to the Strib, with much preening and fanfare and backslapping at how teddibly witty and arch they think they are. Take that! Ha ha, you commies are so burnt! )

Most of the time I think the produce companies were just trying for something memorable more than anything else. I wonder, tho, if the parties behind Swastika brand pears back in the 1920’s anticipated just how memorable that little label of theirs would turn out to be.

As for Woozie-Woozie brand (the Wondercrop!)… Wtf?    ”Quick, Beulah! Peel me a grape, I’m feeling a little woozie-woozie!” …I don’t have a clue.

UPDATE:  For some reason all 9 labels are not showing up this morning.   The WP widget dealie that puts a gallery into a post has decided to show only 6.  It was working fine last night!  [grumble grumble]