National Waffle Day 2009!

Today, August 24, is National Waffle Day in the United States! This celebrates the day in 1869 that Cornelius Swarthout patented the first U.S. waffle iron -- 140 years ago!

Be sure to enjoy some waffles today in celebration of Mr. Swarthout's contribution to the American breakfast table! Here are a couple of items I pulled out to share today.

First is this vintage Eggo Nutri-Grain waffles box from 1985:

And here's an Eggo Cereal box from Kellogg's earlier this year, 2009:

Lastly, here's an old Eggo Waffles commercial which appears to be from the late 1970s or early 1980s. It was posted to YouTube by Thessair.

Blackberry meets Blackberry

I was having a little fun here with my smartphone. Now I can take a bit of vintage Fruit Pie magic with me everywhere. After all, you never know when a giant sea monster will appear demanding snack cakes. Now where's my cape...?

Jungle Fred and the Toast'em Animals

(not Fred)

Did you ever have wild animals pop out of your toaster? If you were a kid in the late 1960s, that may have happened in a kitchen near you!

Popping off supermarket shelves and onto breakfast tables everywhere in the mid 1960s were new toaster pastries. There were Pop-Tarts by Kellogg's, Toastettes by Nabisco and Toast'ems by General Foods.

It seems that around 1967 Toast'ems launched another product specifically geared for kids called Toast'em Animals. These goodies came in colorful boxes, brilliantly designed with fun animals. The first flavors were Sugar Spice Lions, Chocolate Elephants and Berry Bears. (Oh my!) Sugar Spice Lions were also called Cinnamon Lions, though I'm not sure when the name changed.

My friend Dan has one of the original boxes on his blog: click here

And my friend PopTartsBox has an original supermarket display photo on Flickr: click here

According to the commercial and some loyal Toast'em fans, these pastries were bursting with flavor! Here's an image of the one-and-only Jungle Fred, a seasoned wild game hunter with a keen awareness of Toast'em Animals.

(Jungle Fred)

As the commercial goes, Jungle Fred reviews his super-secret supermarket map to stalk his crumbly prey. A priceless bit of animation and advertising history, here's the commercial which was uploaded to YouTube by retrotvluver.

What a treat! Jungle Fred looks like he may have been a cousin of the great Cap'n Crunch.

Some time after the original three flavors hit the market, General Foods continued the line with three more -- Peanut Butter Buffalo, Munch-A-Berry Monkey and Tutti-Frutti Owl. I have this lovely fold-over coupon in my collection which shows the three new fun-to-eat varieties. It's undated but I'd guess it's from 1968.

We see here that there were other Toast'em brands including Fancy Frosted and Pop-Ups. As for premiums, I know of some Toast'em Animals iron-ons. There may have been other items, though I'm not an expert on this product line.

As for Jungle Fred, I can only hope that he had many more adventures and lived a long life full of pastries and stories to tell. If you have memories or more information about Toast'em Animals, click the comments link below and post a comment. Of course I'd love to find one of the original boxes if you've got one lost in the back of your pantry. :-)

(Jungle Fred and his super-secret supermarket map)