Sepia Saturday 293: M'm M'm Good!

Would I like to own that Campbell's soup vending machine in the photo. But, that's not going to happen. The only one vaguely similar sold for $14,000 on eBay, well out of my price range.  

The machine below, about the same vintage as in our prompt, dispensed soup, hot in the can. The lady standing next to the machine is using that huge standing opener to remove the lid. As you can see, the seated women are pouring hot soup into the cup. I'm guessing the huge electric can opener pre-dated the much smaller electric home appliance of the same persuasion. Can you imagine dispensing hot soup in a can today? - you'd be liable if the soup was too hot, sued if the opener hurt anyone and on and on. 

The Campbell's vending machines became obsolete eventually with the advent of the microwave. They reworked most of their packaging to make the soup microwaveable and convenient to eat straight out of the package.

 

Campbell's is a great American brand and the company has resisted pushing and pulling the image around based on au courant marketing whims. I have to say though that I don't like their newest offering very much - the black and white hipster faces turn me off. The packages are always creased up and whatever the art looked like in the beginning, it doesn't resemble in the finished product. The facial expressions are just too shocked and surprised for soup! I hate to say it but they all look like they've just discovered the shock and awe of suppositories. Forgive my over-active imagination. 
Note to self: "Shock n'Awe" - potential name for suppository. 

I always liked the Campbell's kids but they're too cute for today's market. Don't you adore their rosy cheeks? And wide-eyed amazement?

However, if they're going to go modern and startling, I'd love to see them do a really dark ad campaign. Something to give you soupy nightmares.  

Mr. Gluttony and his niece enjoy a bowl of tomato soup together.

("Run little girl. Run as fast as you can.")

Drawing original by www.artbytroy.com

As far as vending machines go, they seem to be waning in popularity around here. I don't like them but I do think a champagne dispenser has it's place - even though it seems like a gross contradiction in style to dispense a luxury brand from a machine. But think of how convenient it would be at Disney Hall when everyone wants champers at the same time and the crowd around the bar is ten deep...and there's only 15 minutes left for intermission! No tips required and I'm guessing the bottles must be easy to open. A glass?? Oh, who needs to bother with a glass - just guzzle that stuff right out of the bottle. 

Epilogue

 From Wikipedia:

"The first Campbell Kids were drawn by Grace Drayton. A prodigious illustrator, she was a staff artist for the Philadelphia Press and Evening Journal, and also a children's book illustrator. Her husband, Theodore Wiederseim, who worked for the Ketterlineus Lithographic Manufacturing Company in Philadelphia, recommended her services to Campbell since she had been drawing little kids with round faces and rosy cheeks for years. She adapted her drawings for Campbell and they became the basis for the Campbell Kids. There were not just two or three kids; the company used many different kids, up to 16."

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It's never too late......

The role of Daniel in "The Man Who Would be King" was reputedly Sean Connery's favorite of all of films. We watched the 1975 flick last night and enjoyed it. 37 years old, it's still fine rollicking, buddy-movie fantasy entertainment.

Karoom Ben Bouih at 103

We were surprised to learn on IMDB that Karoom Ben Bouih who played the high priest Kafu Selimi was 103 years old when he made his one and only movie appearance. He was working as the night watchman of an olive orchard near the Moroccan filming location. John Huston bumped into him and hired him. He'd fall asleep on the set (who wouldn't at 103?) and Huston finally talked him into giving up his night job. Reminded me a little of the Balinese night watchman Nyoman at the Villa Uma in Ubud, Bali where we got married.

At Villa Uma, Bali Wedding: Wayan, Ketut, me, my sister Eilleen, Made, her son Wayan, Richard, Nyoman the night watchman

Nyoman was very old and once owned the beautiful property where the villa was built.   

Outdoor bath, overlooking the property at Villa Uma, Ubud, Bali

View for wedding lunch

 Nyoman would prowl around at night with a flashlight (everyone in Bali had a watchman at that point - it was just after the Bali bombings) and my brother-in-law, jet-lagged and unable to sleep would keep him company trying to pick up a few Balinese words in the process.

But I digress.....Christopher Plummer was in the film playing Rudyard Kipling, the narrator. Plummer holds a record himself in the age department having won an Academy Award in 2010 for Best Actor in  "Beginners". He was 82, the oldest actor to win an Academy Award.

Fun and games at Costco

We made a Costco run the other day. Stocking up on the items Costco sells most. Excluding tobacco and gasoline, the largest volume items are: toilet paper, cashews, rotisserie chicken. They sell over 300,000#'s of cashews a week - the largest sellers of cashews in the world. Costco is also the largest wine vendor in the world. I bought some of that too. I like the fact that they give a rating on some of the wines. I have a mental matrix which involves rating and price - what it boils down to is that I buy wines with a score of 90 or more which are under $12.00. My high price used to be $10.00 but those days are gone.

I loathe the final exam they give you when you exit. They say it's for your own benefit. Ha! They are trying to control "shrinkage" which everybody in retail suffers from to some degree. Most do not resort to examining the contents of your cart and the sales receipt. It used to offend me more than it does now...which I think is true of many offensive processes you endure for some sort of benefit. If the benefit outweighs the discomfort, you tend to ignore the discomfort until one day, you don't notice it any more.  Very scary, but we are adaptive creatures, endowed by nature with the incredible ability to
"get used" to things and carry on - from a stone in your shoe to the seemingly impossible "Stockholm Syndrome" - coming to actually love and depend on your captor.

I've given up trying to figure out the appeal of Costco. Why should we like shopping in an ugly warehouse where parking is almost always hazardous and difficult?. Where the carts are huge and unwieldy; where the merchandise is rarely attractively displayed. Why do we like tasting samples handed to us with tongs or in an ugly paper cup, by an unfriendly, hair-netted, usually unknowledgeable individual. Most of the food packages are too big for our family of two and so we buy toilet paper, cashews, rotisserie chicken and wine. Guess what? These best selling items are packaged in a size appropriate for any size family unit and they are the biggest selling items. If I were Queen of Costco, I'd seriously think about re-packaging a few more items and see what happens to sales.

We always have a hot dog or polish dog when we shop there. We stand in line in the ugly school-cafeteria-like eating area (we go to the Costco in Temecula) - pay $1.50 for the dog and drink (same price as 1965 when they started), endure the dirty, messy condiment stations where they are always guaranteed to be out of onions for the dogs and ice for the drinks, then we sit on the hard benches and actually enjoy the dog! Because it's an amazing bargain!! And because I guess we feel we are getting more than we are paying for. And that's enough to over-ride almost everything else.

The best part of sitting out on the concrete eating the dogs is the people watching. Last week we saw a cart filled with a bunch of food packed into a preparation H box. Another lack of any consideration for the consumer on the part of Costco - Aesthetics anyone? They shove the food into any old box. A very strange looking Asian lady with a "bowl" haircut appeared and rolled the cart away before I could take a picture. Out of curiosity we went back into Costco and looked at the box bins to see if we could spot another H box...none to be seen. So now we have a new game....the first one to spot a Prep H box in a cart gets a prize starting with the letter H, to be determined. 

Knit leggings

Writing about uncomfortable knit clothing reminded me of these "leggings" we used to wear as kids. Looking at the loose knit I have no idea how we stayed warm at -20 or -30, but I guess we did. As if these leggings weren't ugly enough, there's the hat. It's a wonder I'm not more neurotic than I am.

The best thing about this photo is my fat cat Sandy whose head was bigger than mine at this point.  As he didn't have leggings he didn't go out in the cold and probably just lounged around eating all the time. He sure looks better than me.

Bathing Beauties

Beth has a box full of old family photos she's going through - looks like hundreds of them. I've seen some and as most are from Winnipeg, they're of interest to me. I've been rooting around in my own stash, nowhere nearly as extensive as Beth's, and I found this one.

My Aunt Nita and my mother (with ringlets and a scowl) are in the foreground, my younger aunts in the back wearing those horrible knit bathing suits that stretched in the water. My grandmother probably knit the suits - I remember having one that you'd have to hold up with both hands once you got in the water.
It's hard to swim with no hands available... but it was either swim and lose the suit or hold the suit up.  They were horribly itchy too which is why the younger aunts don't look too happy.

I showed this photo to Richard and he inquired about the legs sticking out on the right of my mother and when he pointed them out, I realized my Uncle Louis was lounging behind the girls, his head in Nita's lap. What I really wondered about was the pile of overcoats off to the left and the brick wall in the background of the scene. Did they wear overcoats to this sandy area and set them in a big pile? Were these other people's coats? What about the briefcase on the bottom of the heap?