Note: Due to repetitive theft by those who take my intellectual property from this blog without my permission, and reproduce it as merchandise for sale on sites such as Ebay, Redbubble and Trade Me, I have now watermarked this image. If you are interested in purchasing merch of this image you can head to my personal Redbubble store.
Here is a recreation of a cardboard point-of-sale poster that was sold on Trade Me a few years back, and I have redrawn it from a photograph that accompanied the auction at that time. I suppose it was intended to give housewives dessert ideas – hopefully prompted by kids pulled in by the space theme; a popular mode of advertising that more or less took over from aviation to up-sell everything from jelly to drinks to cereals, in the second half of the 20th century. I started this a couple of years back and it was when I was just changing over to using vector-based graphics so it’s a bit raggedy compared to my usual standard.
I’m taking a guess that this poster dates from around the mid 1970s, given what I know of the brands, products and logos – but mostly indicated by the font styles. Here we have three of New Zealand’s most enormous brands of the time – together in one advertisement, bouncing off each other in a friendly joust.
Advert for Chiffon Whip, 1963. The product was two years old at this point, and lasted well into the 1970s.
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I’ve previously written briefly on the Sunshine brand here, and recreated jelly crystal boxes here, and here.
It was an Auckland-based company owned by W.F. Tucker – and in particular baby boomers will remember Sunshine well for their custard powder, jelly crystals and peanut butter which were very popular through the 1940s to the 1970s – although the company were around a lot longer than that and started using the Sunshine name as far back as the 1910s. The company did a variety of instant desserts and Chiffon Whip was launched in 1961 in flavours lemon, orange, raspberry, and eventually marshmallow.
This Watties design was on the shelves in the early-mid 1960s.
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What else is there to say about Wattie’s? I know I’ve done more than several posts, such as fruit-related ones here, here, and here…and I keep saying I am going to get around to some kind of feature on what is probably Aotearoa’s biggest brand of all time. But lately I’ve been thinking …do I really need to? Books have been written and I’m not sure I have anything to add. It would depend on any new information I can scrape up. And quite frankly, looking at the archives there just may not be a lot of that – given that Wattie’s seemed to feel no need to advertise their wares or have any of their business reported on, until well after WWII, when part and full page ads for the product start to appear (I suspect their major contracts with the government suddenly ending had some bearing on this change). Apparently until that point they were so successful so quickly there was no reason to do so. Anyway, it’s a daunting task to consider writing a full article on this topic, and I guess if somebody really wants to know all about it – they could buy Geoff Conley’s book (1984) which is not that hard to find to this day.
The original picture I redrew the poster from.
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I have had a story half -prepped on Tip-Top for ages but again it’s a tall mountain to climb. However I feel there’s a lot of things that need to be set straight and expanded on. The most detailed article I have seen on the brand was a fairly brief and pretty stock standard issue from the PR department on the 75th anniversary of the brand, for one of those weekend-type magazines like Canvas – and I think quite inadequate given the iconic status of the product – and the archive of material they have at their disposal.
Tip-Top tin signage manufactured for dairies of the 1960s.
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That’s all from me for this week. Come July it will be difficult to focus on this blog as I’ll be back to studying however you can expect briefer, probably picture-based stories and maybe some longer ones if I have time to finish up on them – the James Smith Ltd department store, Aulsebrook’s, commercial artists Alison Fyfe and Bernard Roundhill, and a couple of amazing caches of retro advertising and packaging stuff that have recently been found around the country.
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longwhitekid 
i am disappointed to learn that the crumpled up faded sign retrieved from a junk pile i used to make a something just today was from the 1960’s, i decided to research it on the internet a moment too late for it to be saved…
Hopefully if you used it to make something you saved it in some form…
Just wondering if you know anything about a company that was called “Candy Cones”? I know from a little research that they were brought out by Irvines, when that may have happened I am not sure. My Mother and Grandmother both worked there before I was born in 1967.
Hi Angela, no I haven’t heard of them, but then if I had heard of everything I would have been bored with this gig a while back! Now did they make, candy, cones, or…candy cones? The name does sound vaguely familiar. I’ll look into it.
I believe they made the cones for you to put yr scoop of icecream in:). I think the company was based in Mt Wellington, Auckland but don’t quote me on this fact as my mums memory isn’t great and my grandma has passed away.
Just on from Candy Cones – I went to the company search and there is or was a company called Candy Cones Ltd. I have made contact with the owner and unfortunately they have always been based in Christchurch so this wasn’t the company. They may have been called Candy Cone as opposed to Candy Cones…
The only information I was able to find was a company named Candy Cone Limited, and the registration was held by Gerald Alan and Barbara Ann Ensor from 1982-2013. It’s possible they acquired the business later on. Other than that, nothing.