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“Go get me a blue ribbon.” I must’ve heard my grandpa utter those words hundreds of times as we sat together fishing off our small dock. Even before I could read I knew which beer to grab for him – the one with the first prize ribbon on the can. I didn’t realize it as a child of course, but that ease of recognition was a testament to the power of branding.

Pabst Blue Ribbon beer –PBR to its friends– may today be best known as the preferred beer of old Midwestern fisherman and mustachioed hipsters, but that instantly recognizable ribbon is more than just a symbol or marketing ploy. Pabst did, in fact, win a first place award at one of the most celebrated events in American history. The year was 1893 (a time when everyone looked like a mustachioed hipster) and in Chicago, Illinois, America’s greatest architects and planners had created a fairground unlike any the world had ever seen, a utopian White City.

The World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, was convened to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in America. It was a key moment for design and invention in America. Products such as Juicy Fruit, Crackerjack and Shredded Wheat were introduced to the public for the first time. The Ferris Wheel made its grand debut, outshining the Eiffel Tower and proving that there was no limit to American engineering and imagination. Westinghouse electrified the fairgrounds with alternating current electricity, setting the standard for a nation. Nikola Tesla stunned visitors by shooting lighting from his hands, Thomas Edison thrilled them with the Kinetoscope’s moving pictures, and former steamship captain Frederick Pabst got them drunk on the best damn beer they’d ever tasted.

Pabst’s Best Select –PBS to its friends, presumably– won the top beer award at the 1893 Exposition. Previously, the beer had won many other awards at many other fairs – so many, in fact, that Captain Pabst had already started tying silk ribbons around every bottle. It was a time when beer bottles were more likely to be embossed than labeled and the ribbons were likely added at great cost to Pabst. But Pabst’s display of pride was also a display of marketing savvy, as Patrons started asking their bartenders for the blue ribbon beer. The Exposition honor, however, carried extra import. The blue ribbon of 1893 was the Blue Ribbon.

Soon after the fair, the shorthand was formalized and Pabst’s Best Select was officially changed to “Pabst Blue Ribbon.” As production increased, so too did the need for blue silk ribbon. By the turn of the century, Pabst was going through more than one million feet of ribbon per year, pausing only when World War I caused a silk shortage. The iconic blue ribbon wouldn’t become a permanent part of the label until the end of prohibition in the 1930s, when it appeared on Pabst’s new high-tech distribution method, the “can” – but only after extensive testing proved that the beer can would catch on. While Pabst was willing to take a chance selling their “Export Beer” in cans, they didn’t want to risk selling their flagship brew, with its precious blue ribbon on the label, until it was a proven winner. Of course, the cans and printed graphic ribbons were an enormous success, and by the 1950s, blue ribbon labels fully replaced the silk ribbons. Yet Pabst’s blue ribbon remained critical to their brand, and would go on to become the focus of their advertising campaign and a defining element of an easy-to-identify label, ensuring generations of children everywhere would know which beer to grab for their grandfathers.

Read more: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/design/ ... z2HUH6P4py
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

There's just something about a MoonPie. It's hard to find a Southern country store that doesn't stock them. There are contests to see how many of the chocolate-covered-graham-cracker-and-marshmallow treats people can eat. Melanie Peeples explores the MoonPie phenomenon.

William Ferris, former head of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, said the MoonPie, which recently turned 85, "is more than a snack. It is a cultural artifact."

MoonPies have been made at the 100-year-old Chattanooga Bakery since 1917. Earl Mitchell Jr., who died two years ago, said his father came up with the idea for MoonPies when he asked a Kentucky coal miner what kind of snack he'd like to eat. The answer: something with graham cracker and marshmallow and dipped in chocolate. When Mitchell's father asked how big it should be, the miner looked up in the night sky and framed the full moon with his hands.

It's hard to find someone in the South who doesn't get nostalgic or giddy just thinking about them. Chattanooga resident Laura Pittman's great uncle was a dentist. "He had a very interesting office, but every time you went, before you had your teeth cleaned, you had to drink an RC Cola and eat a MoonPie, then you got your teeth cleaned," she says.

In the 1950s, Big Bill Lister sang about them in "RC Cola and Moon Pie," but no one knows exactly why the soft drink and chocolate snack became famous together. The most popular theory: During the Depression, they were both cheap (a nickel a piece), and they came in bigger servings than their competitors. For a dime, a MoonPie and an RC Cola quickly became known as the workingman's lunch..

Turdacious wrote:

“Go get me a blue ribbon.” I must’ve heard my grandpa utter those words hundreds of times as we sat together fishing off our small dock. Even before I could read I knew which beer to grab for him – the one with the first prize ribbon on the can. I didn’t realize it as a child of course, but that ease of recognition was a testament to the power of branding.

Pabst Blue Ribbon beer –PBR to its friends– may today be best known as the preferred beer of old Midwestern fisherman and mustachioed hipsters, but that instantly recognizable ribbon is more than just a symbol or marketing ploy. Pabst did, in fact, win a first place award at one of the most celebrated events in American history. The year was 1893 (a time when everyone looked like a mustachioed hipster) and in Chicago, Illinois, America’s greatest architects and planners had created a fairground unlike any the world had ever seen, a utopian White City.

The World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, was convened to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in America. It was a key moment for design and invention in America. Products such as Juicy Fruit, Crackerjack and Shredded Wheat were introduced to the public for the first time. The Ferris Wheel made its grand debut, outshining the Eiffel Tower and proving that there was no limit to American engineering and imagination. Westinghouse electrified the fairgrounds with alternating current electricity, setting the standard for a nation. Nikola Tesla stunned visitors by shooting lighting from his hands, Thomas Edison thrilled them with the Kinetoscope’s moving pictures, and former steamship captain Frederick Pabst got them drunk on the best damn beer they’d ever tasted.

Pabst’s Best Select –PBS to its friends, presumably– won the top beer award at the 1893 Exposition. Previously, the beer had won many other awards at many other fairs – so many, in fact, that Captain Pabst had already started tying silk ribbons around every bottle. It was a time when beer bottles were more likely to be embossed than labeled and the ribbons were likely added at great cost to Pabst. But Pabst’s display of pride was also a display of marketing savvy, as Patrons started asking their bartenders for the blue ribbon beer. The Exposition honor, however, carried extra import. The blue ribbon of 1893 was the Blue Ribbon.

Soon after the fair, the shorthand was formalized and Pabst’s Best Select was officially changed to “Pabst Blue Ribbon.” As production increased, so too did the need for blue silk ribbon. By the turn of the century, Pabst was going through more than one million feet of ribbon per year, pausing only when World War I caused a silk shortage. The iconic blue ribbon wouldn’t become a permanent part of the label until the end of prohibition in the 1930s, when it appeared on Pabst’s new high-tech distribution method, the “can” – but only after extensive testing proved that the beer can would catch on. While Pabst was willing to take a chance selling their “Export Beer” in cans, they didn’t want to risk selling their flagship brew, with its precious blue ribbon on the label, until it was a proven winner. Of course, the cans and printed graphic ribbons were an enormous success, and by the 1950s, blue ribbon labels fully replaced the silk ribbons. Yet Pabst’s blue ribbon remained critical to their brand, and would go on to become the focus of their advertising campaign and a defining element of an easy-to-identify label, ensuring generations of children everywhere would know which beer to grab for their grandfathers.

Read more: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/design/ ... z2HUH6P4py
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

Turdacious wrote:

There's just something about a MoonPie. It's hard to find a Southern country store that doesn't stock them. There are contests to see how many of the chocolate-covered-graham-cracker-and-marshmallow treats people can eat. Melanie Peeples explores the MoonPie phenomenon.

William Ferris, former head of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, said the MoonPie, which recently turned 85, "is more than a snack. It is a cultural artifact."

MoonPies have been made at the 100-year-old Chattanooga Bakery since 1917. Earl Mitchell Jr., who died two years ago, said his father came up with the idea for MoonPies when he asked a Kentucky coal miner what kind of snack he'd like to eat. The answer: something with graham cracker and marshmallow and dipped in chocolate. When Mitchell's father asked how big it should be, the miner looked up in the night sky and framed the full moon with his hands.

It's hard to find someone in the South who doesn't get nostalgic or giddy just thinking about them. Chattanooga resident Laura Pittman's great uncle was a dentist. "He had a very interesting office, but every time you went, before you had your teeth cleaned, you had to drink an RC Cola and eat a MoonPie, then you got your teeth cleaned," she says.

In the 1950s, Big Bill Lister sang about them in "RC Cola and Moon Pie," but no one knows exactly why the soft drink and chocolate snack became famous together. The most popular theory: During the Depression, they were both cheap (a nickel a piece), and they came in bigger servings than their competitors. For a dime, a MoonPie and an RC Cola quickly became known as the workingman's lunch..

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=1444997

ImUndaYourBed wrote:As a southerner, I have to say so much of the nostalgia or romance or what-have-you surrounding this snack is Bull Shit. It's not even a good snack. I always thought people who LOVE Moon Pies are either a) Very old, or b) Corny. It seems to me that some shallow southerners romanticize about being from the south, and these romantic feelings manifest themselves in silly displays of southern pride. For example, I've heard this one a few times: "I pronounce it 'Co-Cola,' just like my grandiddy." NO the FUCK you DON'T. And you DON'T like Moon Pies, you lying liars that lie. These people over-identify with the south because they don't have personality, and so they latch on to kitschy shit like this.

And as for RC Cola -- both it and and Coca-Cola were invented in my home town, and I enjoy them just fine. However, they're not really a unique part of my culture -- you can get a Coke all over the world -- it's not especially "southern," in my opinion.

Kazuya Mishima wrote:RC Cola tastes like a flat, watered down Pepsi (which is a nigger drink...white man drinks Coke, btw).

Moonpie is gooder than a motherfucker...that soft cookie outer layer with the intestine blocking marshmallow goodness inside...you give me a pack of moonpies and I'm happier than Ed Zachary just landing a fluffer job on the set of 'Big Dicked Trannies from Brazil #17'.

DikTracy6000 wrote:

Turdacious wrote:

“Go get me a blue ribbon.” I must’ve heard my grandpa utter those words hundreds of times as we sat together fishing off our small dock. Even before I could read I knew which beer to grab for him – the one with the first prize ribbon on the can. I didn’t realize it as a child of course, but that ease of recognition was a testament to the power of branding.

Pabst Blue Ribbon beer –PBR to its friends– may today be best known as the preferred beer of old Midwestern fisherman and mustachioed hipsters, but that instantly recognizable ribbon is more than just a symbol or marketing ploy. Pabst did, in fact, win a first place award at one of the most celebrated events in American history. The year was 1893 (a time when everyone looked like a mustachioed hipster) and in Chicago, Illinois, America’s greatest architects and planners had created a fairground unlike any the world had ever seen, a utopian White City.

The World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, was convened to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in America. It was a key moment for design and invention in America. Products such as Juicy Fruit, Crackerjack and Shredded Wheat were introduced to the public for the first time. The Ferris Wheel made its grand debut, outshining the Eiffel Tower and proving that there was no limit to American engineering and imagination. Westinghouse electrified the fairgrounds with alternating current electricity, setting the standard for a nation. Nikola Tesla stunned visitors by shooting lighting from his hands, Thomas Edison thrilled them with the Kinetoscope’s moving pictures, and former steamship captain Frederick Pabst got them drunk on the best damn beer they’d ever tasted.

Pabst’s Best Select –PBS to its friends, presumably– won the top beer award at the 1893 Exposition. Previously, the beer had won many other awards at many other fairs – so many, in fact, that Captain Pabst had already started tying silk ribbons around every bottle. It was a time when beer bottles were more likely to be embossed than labeled and the ribbons were likely added at great cost to Pabst. But Pabst’s display of pride was also a display of marketing savvy, as Patrons started asking their bartenders for the blue ribbon beer. The Exposition honor, however, carried extra import. The blue ribbon of 1893 was the Blue Ribbon.

Soon after the fair, the shorthand was formalized and Pabst’s Best Select was officially changed to “Pabst Blue Ribbon.” As production increased, so too did the need for blue silk ribbon. By the turn of the century, Pabst was going through more than one million feet of ribbon per year, pausing only when World War I caused a silk shortage. The iconic blue ribbon wouldn’t become a permanent part of the label until the end of prohibition in the 1930s, when it appeared on Pabst’s new high-tech distribution method, the “can” – but only after extensive testing proved that the beer can would catch on. While Pabst was willing to take a chance selling their “Export Beer” in cans, they didn’t want to risk selling their flagship brew, with its precious blue ribbon on the label, until it was a proven winner. Of course, the cans and printed graphic ribbons were an enormous success, and by the 1950s, blue ribbon labels fully replaced the silk ribbons. Yet Pabst’s blue ribbon remained critical to their brand, and would go on to become the focus of their advertising campaign and a defining element of an easy-to-identify label, ensuring generations of children everywhere would know which beer to grab for their grandfathers.

Read more: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/design/ ... z2HUH6P4py
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter

For that same great World's Fair a brilliant engineer designed a giant revolving wheel to rival the Eiffel Tower's success at France's world's fair. His wheel was over 300 feet high, had 36 giant cars each holding 60 people. His name was George Washington Ferris. Cracker Jacks and Shredded Wheat were also introduced to the public. The public commented that shredded wheat tasted like cardboard.

ImUndaYourBed wrote:

Turdacious wrote:

There's just something about a MoonPie. It's hard to find a Southern country store that doesn't stock them. There are contests to see how many of the chocolate-covered-graham-cracker-and-marshmallow treats people can eat. Melanie Peeples explores the MoonPie phenomenon.

William Ferris, former head of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, said the MoonPie, which recently turned 85, "is more than a snack. It is a cultural artifact."

MoonPies have been made at the 100-year-old Chattanooga Bakery since 1917. Earl Mitchell Jr., who died two years ago, said his father came up with the idea for MoonPies when he asked a Kentucky coal miner what kind of snack he'd like to eat. The answer: something with graham cracker and marshmallow and dipped in chocolate. When Mitchell's father asked how big it should be, the miner looked up in the night sky and framed the full moon with his hands.

It's hard to find someone in the South who doesn't get nostalgic or giddy just thinking about them. Chattanooga resident Laura Pittman's great uncle was a dentist. "He had a very interesting office, but every time you went, before you had your teeth cleaned, you had to drink an RC Cola and eat a MoonPie, then you got your teeth cleaned," she says.

In the 1950s, Big Bill Lister sang about them in "RC Cola and Moon Pie," but no one knows exactly why the soft drink and chocolate snack became famous together. The most popular theory: During the Depression, they were both cheap (a nickel a piece), and they came in bigger servings than their competitors. For a dime, a MoonPie and an RC Cola quickly became known as the workingman's lunch..

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=1444997

As a southerner, I have to say so much of the nostalgia or romance or what-have-you surrounding this snack is Bull Shit. It's not even a good snack. I always thought people who LOVE Moon Pies are either a) Very old, or b) Corny. It seems to me that some shallow southerners romanticize about being from the south, and these romantic feelings manifest themselves in silly displays of southern pride. For example, I've heard this one a few times: "I pronounce it 'Co-Cola,' just like my grandiddy." NO the FUCK you DON'T. And you DON'T like Moon Pies, you lying liars that lie. These people over-identify with the south because they don't have personality, and so they latch on to kitschy shit like this.

And as for RC Cola -- both it and and Coca-Cola were invented in my home town, and I enjoy them just fine. However, they're not really a unique part of my culture -- you can get a Coke all over the world -- it's not especially "southern," in my opinion.

ImUndaYourBed wrote:

Turdacious wrote:

There's just something about a MoonPie. It's hard to find a Southern country store that doesn't stock them. There are contests to see how many of the chocolate-covered-graham-cracker-and-marshmallow treats people can eat. Melanie Peeples explores the MoonPie phenomenon.

William Ferris, former head of the Center for the Study of Southern Culture at the University of Mississippi, said the MoonPie, which recently turned 85, "is more than a snack. It is a cultural artifact."

MoonPies have been made at the 100-year-old Chattanooga Bakery since 1917. Earl Mitchell Jr., who died two years ago, said his father came up with the idea for MoonPies when he asked a Kentucky coal miner what kind of snack he'd like to eat. The answer: something with graham cracker and marshmallow and dipped in chocolate. When Mitchell's father asked how big it should be, the miner looked up in the night sky and framed the full moon with his hands.

It's hard to find someone in the South who doesn't get nostalgic or giddy just thinking about them. Chattanooga resident Laura Pittman's great uncle was a dentist. "He had a very interesting office, but every time you went, before you had your teeth cleaned, you had to drink an RC Cola and eat a MoonPie, then you got your teeth cleaned," she says.

In the 1950s, Big Bill Lister sang about them in "RC Cola and Moon Pie," but no one knows exactly why the soft drink and chocolate snack became famous together. The most popular theory: During the Depression, they were both cheap (a nickel a piece), and they came in bigger servings than their competitors. For a dime, a MoonPie and an RC Cola quickly became known as the workingman's lunch..

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/stor ... Id=1444997

As a southerner, I have to say so much of the nostalgia or romance or what-have-you surrounding this snack is Bull Shit. It's not even a good snack. I always thought people who LOVE Moon Pies are either a) Very old, or b) Corny. It seems to me that some shallow southerners romanticize about being from the south, and these romantic feelings manifest themselves in silly displays of southern pride. For example, I've heard this one a few times: "I pronounce it 'Co-Cola,' just like my grandiddy." NO the FUCK you DON'T. And you DON'T like Moon Pies, you lying liars that lie. These people over-identify with the south because they don't have personality, and so they latch on to kitschy shit like this.

And as for RC Cola -- both it and and Coca-Cola were invented in my home town, and I enjoy them just fine. However, they're not really a unique part of my culture -- you can get a Coke all over the world -- it's not especially "southern," in my opinion.

Kazuya Mishima wrote:Moonpies and Goo-Goo Clusters are the tits...let the haters hate.

Oh, and a pecan roll from Stuckey's, niggaz.

Drew0786 wrote:Anyone ever have a Coke and add salted peanuts to it?
Not sure if it is a Southern thing or an Ozark hillbilly thing.

Bob Wildes wrote:

Drew0786 wrote:Anyone ever have a Coke and add salted peanuts to it?
Not sure if it is a Southern thing or an Ozark hillbilly thing.

Yeah it's a Southern thing. I did it a time or two.

Barbara Mandrell sang about it back when she was hot.

A duck will ruin a good chicken.

Ed Zachary wrote:

Bob Wildes wrote:

Drew0786 wrote:Anyone ever have a Coke and add salted peanuts to it?
Not sure if it is a Southern thing or an Ozark hillbilly thing.

Yeah it's a Southern thing. I did it a time or two.

Barbara Mandrell sang about it back when she was hot.

Yep on both counts.

A duck will ruin a good chicken.

Florence, N.J., isn’t too different from other small towns in the Garden State, one marked, if anything, by a slew of very ordinary sights—chain flower shops at every major intersection, decidedly lower gas prices, and a few cozy diners. But it is also home to something else, acquired by Greg Kohfeldt when he bought Sam Carlani’s auto-repair shop here almost 20 years ago: Adolf Hitler’s toilet.

According to Kohfeldt, the toilet came off of Hitler’s biggest private yacht, the Aviso Grille, which was between 400 and 500 feet long, and at the time one of the biggest private boats in existence. “He wanted to ride it down the Thames in London and go live in Windsor Palace when he invaded,” Kohfeldt told me on a subzero morning last week as he pulled a sink—also from the ship, and now in pieces—out of a box and laid them out for me to examine each of the maker’s stamps and faucets. Another resident of Florence, Dick Glass—an expert on Hitler’s yacht—told me that the ship was armed, had a crew of 245 men, a private room for Eva Braun, and was bigger than J.P. Morgan’s ship Corsair. The Aviso Grille also played a significant role in one particular moment in history: Hitler’s Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz stood on the deck of the ship on May 1, 1945, and gave the first word of the Führer’s death and took command of Germany.

Turdacious wrote:

“Go get me a blue ribbon.” I must’ve heard my grandpa utter those words hundreds of times as we sat together fishing off our small dock. Even before I could read I knew which beer to grab for him – the one with the first prize ribbon on the can. I didn’t realize it as a child of course, but that ease of recognition was a testament to the power of branding.

Pabst Blue Ribbon beer –PBR to its friends– may today be best known as the preferred beer of old Midwestern fisherman and mustachioed hipsters, but that instantly recognizable ribbon is more than just a symbol or marketing ploy. Pabst did, in fact, win a first place award at one of the most celebrated events in American history. The year was 1893 (a time when everyone looked like a mustachioed hipster) and in Chicago, Illinois, America’s greatest architects and planners had created a fairground unlike any the world had ever seen, a utopian White City.

The World’s Columbian Exposition, also known as the Chicago World’s Fair, was convened to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in America. It was a key moment for design and invention in America. Products such as Juicy Fruit, Crackerjack and Shredded Wheat were introduced to the public for the first time. The Ferris Wheel made its grand debut, outshining the Eiffel Tower and proving that there was no limit to American engineering and imagination. Westinghouse electrified the fairgrounds with alternating current electricity, setting the standard for a nation. Nikola Tesla stunned visitors by shooting lighting from his hands, Thomas Edison thrilled them with the Kinetoscope’s moving pictures, and former steamship captain Frederick Pabst got them drunk on the best damn beer they’d ever tasted.

Pabst’s Best Select –PBS to its friends, presumably– won the top beer award at the 1893 Exposition. Previously, the beer had won many other awards at many other fairs – so many, in fact, that Captain Pabst had already started tying silk ribbons around every bottle. It was a time when beer bottles were more likely to be embossed than labeled and the ribbons were likely added at great cost to Pabst. But Pabst’s display of pride was also a display of marketing savvy, as Patrons started asking their bartenders for the blue ribbon beer. The Exposition honor, however, carried extra import. The blue ribbon of 1893 was the Blue Ribbon.

Soon after the fair, the shorthand was formalized and Pabst’s Best Select was officially changed to “Pabst Blue Ribbon.” As production increased, so too did the need for blue silk ribbon. By the turn of the century, Pabst was going through more than one million feet of ribbon per year, pausing only when World War I caused a silk shortage. The iconic blue ribbon wouldn’t become a permanent part of the label until the end of prohibition in the 1930s, when it appeared on Pabst’s new high-tech distribution method, the “can” – but only after extensive testing proved that the beer can would catch on. While Pabst was willing to take a chance selling their “Export Beer” in cans, they didn’t want to risk selling their flagship brew, with its precious blue ribbon on the label, until it was a proven winner. Of course, the cans and printed graphic ribbons were an enormous success, and by the 1950s, blue ribbon labels fully replaced the silk ribbons. Yet Pabst’s blue ribbon remained critical to their brand, and would go on to become the focus of their advertising campaign and a defining element of an easy-to-identify label, ensuring generations of children everywhere would know which beer to grab for their grandfathers.

Read more: http://blogs.smithsonianmag.com/design/ ... z2HUH6P4py
Follow us: @SmithsonianMag on Twitter