Edible And Credible

This is just an update post on several things that have been going on, as well as a round-up on the last year – or two, even.

Firstly, I want to thank all the new readers, people who have placed links on their own blogs, and the people that have signed up to follow. After two years the blog is picking up steam and as a result I have made many interesting contacts and friends in the history, research and collecting fields. Longwhitekid has even been listed on the National Library of New Zealand’s website as one of their “go-to” resources on the genre, I was pretty chuffed by that. Now the National Library of Australia are archiving the lot too. Longwhitekid has also been featured recently on the websites of Groove 107.7 FM, The Cultural Mapping Project, NZICMA (The New Zealand Ice Cream Manufacturer’s Association),  and Living in 60s 70s 80s Christchurch on Facebook. Thanks everyone for your support!

Just when I was ready to write off Facebook for good, for the first year they jumped from nowhere to the number one slot – and I received more traffic from there than any other source. Previously most of my visitors have come through from the blogroll of my friend Lisa Truttman’s definitive (not to mention extensive) Auckland history journal Timespanner. Flickr traditionally follows after the fact. The most highly read post was the one I did on Tip-Top’s Moggy Man and TT-2s. The rest of the posts that ranked in the top five most reads were on Whittakers, Reckitt & Colman, Spaceman candy cigarettes, and the history of Buttermaid and the Dustin family business.

It has also brought in some interesting offers. I was adamant from the start, and have maintained that, as one of several projects I work on – I wanted this one to stay simply a pastime. It didn’t have to have an “outcome” for once – it was to be pure enjoyment and didn’t serve any real purpose – a hobby in the definitive sense. Although I have been approached over various tentative writing projects and the like… I have elected to avoid most of them (how many times have I heard “really, you should do a book”- the first time was one too many). However I have finally caved – a few months back I got a very interesting proposition via one of my posts here which has been under discussion for a while now. I’m not at liberty to discuss the details except to say it is moving and that’s the only hint I am going to give. The prospect is a very exciting one!

With some notoriety comes the down side. Recently I was dismayed to discover that a woman named Sarndra Raybould of Waipukurau had been downloading the artwork from Longwhitekid, my online store, and also my Flickr account, and putting it on various (cruddy, embarrassing) items of merchandise for sale on her website and Trade Me. You can say “well, that’s what you get for putting it out there”, and she did say that – in between the lines . That still doesn’t make it right. I wasn’t the only one. Other people had photos filched, and she took artwork from Wattie’s, Sanitarium and an advertising agency Fly Creative that have worked with everyone from CSR to Edmonds.

Then, when I confronted her and asked for an explanation (not an apology – I never actually got that) , she had the gall to tell me that all I do is “just use bits of other people’s stuff and Photoshop it together” so who am I to criticize  etc. This probably comes from someone that thinks an Adobe Suite is one of the better rooms in a mud hut hotel in the desert somewhere. Anyway, apparently that justifies theft, by denigrating my skills. A weak excuse, and irrelevant I may add. No, I corrected Miss Ravebold – I have respect for what I do – whereas she is just a thief.
She was not even justificatory – she arrogantly believed she had a right to do whatever she pleased. She did take (most of) the stuff she had for sale off Trade Me and her business website. By the end of it she had made me furious which was clearly her intention. What a piece of work! Apparently it was too much to simply say sorry – I would have let it go. I’m good like that.

So, this has led me to placing a copyright by-line on the main page, as well as under every post from now on. It’s unfortunate I have to do this but that is just the way it is – Give some people an inch as they say. I probably should have done this from the start but I really didn’t think anyone would be that interested in anything I am doing. Seemingly, this has all changed. The premise was always sharing information. Sadly, some people will just take whatever you offer up – and further to that clean you out completely.

Unlike some people I don’t think I own history; it belongs to no-one and never will belong to anybody. And I don’t personally think that because it comes up on Google, I can just take it. I try to give credit where it’s due, going to some trouble to track down authors and copyrights (many things are from private collections that are kindly and generously lent to me for my use alone). And I try to remember to thank people if they help me. But if you print it off and paste it on a butt-ugly toilet roll holder (which she did) – and then give me an attitude about it, you’re asking for a war. You’ve been warned. Fortunately for me, the Marmite people, pissed off about her use of their imagery, stepped in with their issues and finished the job off for me. Anyway, in lieu of simply biting the bullet and conceding with that one simple word – every time someone Googles Sarndra’s name – this will come up from now until eternity. That’s a pretty apt punishment, I think. And I rank quite highly on search engines, unfortunately for her.

The image at the top is a recreation I have done of yet another label from the Kaipara Dairy Co-op, which I covered here in April 2011 and here in January 2012. I guess it dates from the early 1960s. They don’t come up for sale that often, but they do come up – perhaps once a year. I’d describe these cans as a “hard to get” item. Yet it’s interesting that both Auckland venues MOTAT and the Maritime Museum have the bulk versions of this can in their “ol’ timey grocery” displays – and in multiples. They look in too good condition and are too difficult to get for me to believe they are the real deal; I think someone has made them. I will see them with my own eyes one of these days and be the judge. Anyway, that’s what I’ve done, since I have really wanted an example for my collection for quite a while and every single time I’ve missed out on it. As far as the future of the dairy buildings in Helensville – I recall someone slipped me a note somewhere saying that the building, after being re-listed for auction, was purchased, but by whom – and what for – is unknown. There was talk that it would possibly be grabbed by local council, for an arts precinct – which would be brilliant – but I doubt that’s what happened.

Happy New Year, everyone. Here’s to another fun and interesting year for Longwhitekid.

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Addendum, early Aug 2013: Our chef has a name! Meet Pierre Auguste. Finally this week an ad  turned up showing that Instant Kaipara was in production from at least the late 1950s, also in labelled jars as well as the two sizes of tins. This is the only time I have ever seen the product advertised. 

From the Recipe Book and Household Guide by Women’s division Federated Farmers NZ (Inc)., exact publishing date unknown but appears to be late 1950s-early 1960s.

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All content of Longwhitekid copyright Darian Zam © 2012. All rights reserved.

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Tasteful Transformation: Tip-Top’s TT2 and Moggy Man

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’s a recreation of a tatty Moggy Man sandwich board sign for a dairy business,  below, which came up for sale a couple of weeks ago and sold for over  350 dollars; he was the character representing a long gone Tip-Top brand which was shelved in the early 1970s – now it seems highly desirable to collectors.

I’ve already made my way through half of what will no doubt be a significant article on Tip-Top to be published sometime in the next few weeks, so I’ll just give you the bare bones background here.

TT-2 registered trademark, circa 1957

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Tip-Top was the brainchild of two friends, Albert Hayman and Len Malaghan who decided to open an ice cream parlour. The first one was in Manners Street, Wellington and threw its doors open in 1936. Such a success it was – that within just a couple of years they had a string of them dotted around the lower half of the North Island and the top of the South.

TT-2 Moonraider POS poster for dairies, circa  1967, courtesy of Fonterra’s Tip-Top archives.

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By 1938 they had officially formed a company and were manufacturing their own product. The rest, as they say in the tired old world of cliché, is history – and today it can truly be considered one of few truly iconic brands – in fact they are celebrating their 75th birthday this year.

 TT-2 wrapper, early-mid 1960s, courtesy of Fonterra’s Tip-Top archives.

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With somewhere near fifty million litres of ice cream being churned out annually ( literally as well as figuratively), dozens of products on the market and selling internationally – the business ,now under the jurisdiction of Fonterra Co-operative Group, shows no sign of fading away by any means. Not bad going for a company that started out as one milk bar, with  an ice cream confection named after a cow (the Topsy, which is still on the market today).

 TT-2 wrapper, early-mid 1960s, courtesy of Fonterra’s Tip-Top archives.

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Moggy Man was a Tip-Top brand that began life around the late 1950s as the extremely successful TT-2 ice block – one of the earlier Tip-Top brands that were considered a “novelty” line at the time – that said, anything that wasn’t cone ice cream was considered as such. It was an abbreviation of Tip-Top (TT) with a “2” which indicated it’s relegation to second tier product as it was an ice confection – whereas everything else at the time contained  a degree of dairy; mainly cream.

 TT-2 Moonraider wrapper, early-mid 1960s, courtesy of Fonterra’s Tip-Top archives.

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Many baby boomers recall their childhood and fondly remember the TT-2 range in uncomplicated flavours like orange, pineapple, raspberry, coca cola, lime and lemonade – a reflection of simpler times in sunny summer days. By the early to mid 1960s the more sophisticated themes and flavours of Pineapple Pole, Jaffa Dip, Banana Shake, Raspberry Dazzle, Squidley Twin (an Octopus theme in two flavours), Sweet Orange, Milkshake, Hokey Pokey, White Lemonade, and Moonraider were being tried out on the more adventurous tastebuds of the public.

 TT-2 wrapper, early-mid 1960s, courtesy of Fonterra’s Tip-Top archives.

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Sometime around the end of 1967 or so, the character had been introduced to make a conglomeration “Moggy Man TT2”, a “space-shaped ” ice (not as interesting as it sounds) with milk and extra sugar added – and new varieties to go with this revamped theme of Sunspot, Meteor, Lunar, and with the former Moonraider continued.

Moggy Man TT2 wrapper, circa 1968

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By 1968 the old part of the name had been completely resigned to the scrapheap and the character stood alone as a brand with the space motif continued in varieties like Star Strobe, Red Rocket, Concorde (orange and lemon), Astro Flash, and Zero X .

Moggy Man TT2 wrapper, circa 1968

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However he seemed to be fizzling out and the last ad I’ve seen in the early 1970s shows basic raspberry, chocolate, lime, and orange milk ices in the range. He must have vanished into a black hole soon after – I suspect he was gone by 1974. I  certainly don’t remember Moggy Man being around – and he was eventually replaced a few years later by the Popsicle range – “coolest band in the land”. They weren’t really…the whole “ice lolly as faux rock star” campaign and branding was kind of tacky. Bring back MM, I say – he was much neater!

 I found this document for the Moggy Man character being registered to Peters Ice Cream of NSW, circa 1968. I don’t understand what this is about or why they had posession of the brand at the same time as Tip-Top. I can only imagine it was a licensing deal to launch the brand in Australia, because Peters were  only present in New Zealand in the 1930s and didn’t make a “comeback” until the 1990s.I find no further mention of a presence outside of New Zealand, so one can assume it was not a success. 

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Moggy Man POS poster for dairies, circa 1970, courtesy of Fonterra’s Tip-Top archives.

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I’ve got my high quality recreation of the Moggy Man poster for sale on Redbubble store as posters here;

http://www.redbubble.com/people/darianzam/works/8731662-untitled?p=poster

and cards here.

http://www.redbubble.com/people/darianzam/works/8731662-tip-top-moggy-man?c=130101-kiwiana-cards

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Addendum, mid-October 2012:   I was wondering why I never found this advert until now. This is why – In a very weird coincidence Archives NZ uploaded it the very same day I published my article. Now what are the chances of that? This ad pinpoints the above poster to circa 1970 when Astro Flash and Zero X were probably first released.

Bite Size: Reconstituted Retro

Here I have recreated the label for a Meadow Maid milk powder can which probably dates from the early 1960s. They come up for sale every once in a while, maybe every eight months or so. I am pretty sure I remember my grandparents having one of these around at some point when I was a youngster. I am fairly sure it wasn’t new then, but being used to store something else; perhaps in the kitchen cupboards but more likely nails or screws in my grandfather’s workshop.  This was produced by the Kaipara Dairy Co-op which I previously wrote about in this post “The Creamy Dragon Strikes Again” back in April:

https://longwhitekid.wordpress.com/2011/04/15/the-creamy-dragon-strikes-again/

Kaipara produced several products that I know of including skim and full fat milk powder, ice cream mix, malted milk, margarine and gouda – under different brand names .

I can’t see what’s on the back of the can from any of the images I have, so I sort of “imagined” the rest of the label by basing it on the design on the back of another yellow Kaipara tin with a snooty chef on it, that is in both the MOTAT and Voyager New Zealand Maritime Museum ol’ timey general store collections respectively (I am pretty sure they are reproductions, it’s interesting how they both have new-looking large versions of them, I’d like to know the story behind that). The yellow can is a neat design that’s on my list to add to my collection but I haven’t been successful in yet getting one. I’ve never seen what the malted milk can looks like and don’t know what brand name it was under.

I hadn’t heard anything further about the situation with the long-abandoned Kaipara Dairy buildings since the council had ordered the removal of them early last year; and the last news item appeared in April of 2011 – in which residents were still agitating for the old factory to be turned to rubble. However it seems the factory site is still standing and an auction was slated yet again, this time for December 2011. Someone posted this clip of their interior tour in October

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqeOPTiOeAU

and it looked like it was cleaned up a little for the sale. Same as the last time, I suspect it was passed in. There’s rumbling about a community art space, which sounds good to me.

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Addendum, early Aug 2013: Finally this week an ad  turned up showing that Meadow Maid was in production from at least the late 1950s. This is the only time I have ever seen the product advertised. 

From the Recipe Book and Household Guide by Women’s division Federated Farmers NZ (Inc)., exact publishing date unknown but appears to be late 1950s-early 1960s.

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All content of Longwhitekid copyright Darian Zam © 2013. All rights reserved.

An Elaborate Process

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.

 

I’m  excited to present this recreation of a Chesdale cheese ad. This is probably the most complex thing I have attempted so far and have put it off for a few months because I knew it was going to be hard. As I am getting more daring at my recreation work I felt I was ready to tackle this one from a blurry, bad quality picture. This took about two days of frustrating work to make; starting with designing the three individual paper labels for the cheese segments, then the foil wedge, then the six wedges in the box, and the cartoons of the family which I could hardly see properly. As well as all the fonts which had to be hand-kerned and often recreated from scratch.
This item probably dates from around 1958, and was in a promotional booklet for a company named Butland Industries which had a lot of other nice colourful ads in it showcasing their products of the moment. At the time their other hugely successful brand besides Chesdale was Crest Fine Foods (canned fruit, and vegetables, including baked beans and spaghetti – I think this brand fizzled out in the early 1970s). Later on they had Goldpack dried fruits – as well as jam brands Blue Bonnet and Craig’s which I remember well from childhood.

It was for auction a few months ago and I really wanted to grab it – unfortunately I had just missed the end of the auction. I would have paid more money by far than it sold for, too. I was so desperate to get hold of the imagery that I approached the seller and also the buyer to try and get better photos of the advertising pages – to no avail. Unfortunately that tack didn’t work out so well to say the least, so the next best thing was to just to buckle down and make it myself.

Chesdale Cheese ad, between 1926 and 1949. Ref: Eph-A-FOOD-1940s-01. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

Unfortunately there doesn’t seem to be a lot of information available either about the history of the Chesdale cheese brand or about Sir Jack Butland and his company. What we do know is he was born in Hokitika in 1896 but spent most of his life based in Auckland, where he started in foodstuffs as an agent – after earlier careers in banking and sales.
He came to be considered a pioneer in food manufacturing. He founded J. R. Butland Pty Ltd in 1922, NZ Cheese four years later in 1926, and Butland Industries proper in 1949. I know that Crest was launched in 1956 – and that the packaging had changed by 1961 – so this booklet dates from some time in between. I conject on the earlier side.
In the days before widespread refrigeration, traditional cheeses sweated, went oily, cracked, and quickly went stale. Jack Butland combated this problem by experimenting with additives, and found that adding amounts of sodium or potassium phosphate would make the cheese smooth textured and spreadable – and it would actually keep well, remaining moist and hygienic.

Chesdale Cheese, between 1949 and 1951. From cover of Four Square Stores promotional jigsaw puzzle envelope.  Ref: Eph-F-GAMES-1950s-05-cover. Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand.

He was obviously already successful, but his was his big breakthrough. He sold it wrapped in aluminium foil, in an 8 ounce cardboard carton and later in disc shaped boxes as per the ad.

He was eventually knighted mainly for his significant philanthropic contributions some time before he passed away in 1982.
Chesdale was sold to Kraft in 1981 and then sold to Heinz Wattie in 1995. It currently is owned by New Zealand Milk Brands Limited. Chesdale is still in production today, however it also has an enormous market in the Middle East.
Chesdale is of course now considered an icon of Kiwiana, mostly for the famous Ches and Dale character TV commercials – of course they came much later in around 1968, created by advertising agency Dormer Beck -which I have a long story coming up on next week, so I will cover it in more depth then.

No Business Like Snow Business

Snowdrop Ice Cream. I have searched high and low using every term I can think of with the few clues that I have, and have turned up nothing about this product. Or company. Or the owner. The only information I have is that the address was being used by a butcher in 1906, as a notice appeared in the Ashburton Guardian that year- indicating that previously there had also been a butchery on the premises. It is really unusual to not be able to find a single thing out with information like the brand name, the owners name, and street address. I can’t ask for more leads than this, yet I have come up with zilch. Compared to my recent story on Dustin’s and Buttermaid it seems sort of ridiculous not to be able to produce anything at all. I have written to the Ashburton museum to see if they have any more information on this item which is in their collection . Anyway I’m guessing post 1945 for this item, I’d say between late 1940s and mid 1950s.

Photo of assembled Snowdrop box, courtesy of Ashburton Museum collection, object no. 4.99.124

There have been a lot of these turning up on the collectables market lately, and in fact you can get them at quite a reasonable price. A friend nabbed this one for me in Auckland for two dollars in a sale which was one of the best bargains ever. They must be ex-factory stock as they are all mint and still flat packed. I can only assume that they were found during a renovation probably at the address listed on the box which is 141 East Street Ashburton (the town is south of Christchurch). Who knows what the deal is.

141 East Street Ashburton premises, The Ashburton Guardian, 24 November 1906, Page 3

It’s probably rather like the story behind the amount of Peacock can labels that have been around for quite some time – in fact I can remember them being for sale when I had just started collecting as a child – I used to see them at swap meets and the like. Apparently they came out of the factory during demolition. I am fairly sure that I read the story somewhere recently told by an employee of the factory that there was some kind of a space in the rafters above the offices and rather than take label stock back to the store room, it was common practice to lazily throw them into the ceiling where they stayed until discovered during dismantling of the building – and thus they have been doing the rounds ever since.

I can’t remember where I’ve read this recounting but it was in the last couple of weeks, and probably in relation to some cursory research I did on the St George jam factory (both St George and Peacock were brands of Irvine & Stevenson).

Rather like the Snowdrop boxes the Peacock stuff has lost its cachet (well, to me anyway) because of the frequency with which they turn up for sale. In fact the price on both items is dropping drastically so now Peacock items are going for between $1.00 and $3.50 apiece (even less in multiple offerings), with St George dropping to around five dollars on average, and asking any more will generally result in it being passed in. Same situation with the Snowdrop boxes as people have an inability to move a common item. Although beautiful designs they don’t have much appeal for many dedicated collectors due to their lack of rarity. I’ll update if any additional info materialises.

 

Postscript, mid September 2012: Mystery no more. In the meantime someone with a lot of information as well as leads, has come forward regarding  Snowdrop, and I will be updating on this brand soon. 

Sugary Strategies And Delicious Devices

I previously wrote about the Peter Pan brand initially here in April 2011 https://longwhitekid.wordpress.com/2011/04/11/neverbland/ and then here again https://longwhitekid.wordpress.com/2011/06/21/petering-out/ in June 2011.
Until now I have had little to work with, but today came some big breakthroughs on finding information – and it seems like the brand may have been around for quite a while before Tom and Hayden Denne became famous for their ice cream. Ah, the pitfalls of research. Time and again I’ve experienced that just one missing letter can make or break, when it comes to tracking down historical data. I guess it’s not my fault that I didn’t guess Haden actually had a Y in it since the information was passed from someone else who knew them both.

I’ll post some more soon when the dots are joined – but in the meantime , here is yet another poster I have recreated from the low res photos of the 1960s Peter Pan series that someone was auctioning off on Trademe a while back.
Peter Pan seemed to have cornered the market in kitschy novelty product in their day, and one gimmick was moulded candies ( “honey bunnies” and “dolly lollies”) impregnated inside the confection such as here with the Hello Dolly product.

A friend remembers having one of them as a child, recalling a blue-coloured iceblock or ice cream –  placing the time in the early to mid-1960s. In the case of this particular product and its accompanying promo material, it would have been produced to profiteer off the back of the movie starring Audrey Hepburn which was released in 1969.

More on the Peter Pan brand and my ongoing series of recreations later in the year.

Bite Size: Blossom Dairy

The Anchor brand was born in 1886 in a dairy factory at Pukekura, created by Henry Reynolds who arrived from Cornwall in 1868. By the 1880s he was dairy farming in the Waikato and established a small dairy factory. The brand name was allegedly inspired by a tattoo on the arm of one of his workers. It has become one of this country’s longest-lived and best-known trademarks – for cheese, dried milk and yoghurt products, and even at one point dried fruit and baking powder – as well as the famous butter.

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A highly innovative and efficient approach, based on farmer-owned co-operative companies, enabled dairying to grow into New Zealand’s most important industry. The production of butter and cheese flourished and by 1920, there were 600 dairy processing factories throughout New Zealand of which approximately 85% were co-operative-based.

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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

The milk brands from the New Zealand Dairy Group, the original long term holders, is now owned by Fonterra, which owns, well- just about every brand that Goodman Fielder doesn’t have, it seems. So it’s fitting that GF own the butter and cheese brands. Ah, butter and cheese….Fonterra and Goodman Fielder. You know what they say about the lesser of two evils.

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Two of these cardboard point-of-sale posters were listed on Trademe last week and I’ve recreated it from a low res snapshot. I love the strong, clean graphics and bright colours. Anchor is yet another iconic New Zealand brand with a large story which I will no doubt take up again at a later date.

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All content of Longwhitekid copyright Darian Zam © 2014. All rights reserved.