Do You Still Use "Golden Age" Products?

[Miss 1929]

Not Darlie, Darkie!

Darlie toothpaste?

For real, that is the name.
But now, they also market it in Europe under the name "Jazz Mouth", a name I am crazy about! Gotta get me some Jazz Mouth!

 

[Ecuador Jim]

...let's not forget that timeless protein staple, Spam! :eusa_clap

 

[Ecuador Jim]

...and in case anyone wants to stroll down the "memory aisle"

http://www.hometownfavorites.com/

 

[Chas]

Lux Toilet Soap
Royal Crown Pomade
Dubbin
Quaker Oats
Fry's Cocoa
Arm & Hammer
Pabst Blue Ribbon
Shaving Soap & a straight razor (this took some practice!!)
Borax

More, though I can't think of them at the moment.

 

[Big Man]

While doing some cleaning yesterday, I took down an old picture that hasn't been moved in years. It was one (of many) that my grandfather framed when he worked at McDowell Hardware back in the late 1920's and early 1930's. On the back of the picture was this advertisement for paint. So, for the next painting project I have guess what brand of paint I'll buy ...

 

[The Wolf]

"You can't paint a house with applesauce" ?
That has got to be one of the strangest slogans for a product.

Sincerely,
The Wolf

 

[scotrace]

We get the glass bottle milk from the one in Wooster Ohio now and then. It's amazingly good, with the cream on top and everything. We'd get it all the time, but jeebers, it's like $3 a quart. Well worth it, but yowch. Just now and then.

We just finished off the eggnog from the same dairy.

 

[OldSkoolFrat]

Kitchen-Aide Mixer.

 

[Michaelson]

Moxie is sold in all the grocery stores here -- it's the favorite soft drink of grumpy men in plaid flannel shirts and little felt hats who sit on the porch all day and yell at the neighborhood kids.

My kind of guys!!!lol

In my case, I shave every morning with my Old Spice shaving mug and brush (the mug once belonged to my late father), and I drink my Ovaltine at night.

Regards! Michaelson

 

[NoirDame]

Bon Ami

I'd like to thank Lizzie Maine and the others who spoke up for Bon Ami. I tried it and it works like a dream. Thanks!

 

[russa11]

For those using Lux Soap, where are you able to by it? I used to buy it all the time ( and have some bars stashed away) but they stopped selling it here around 4 years ago. I wrote to the manufacturer and they mentioned that it was being discontinued in this area and then sent me a link to buy it from over seas.

 

[Jovan]

Right now I'm also giving Brylcreem a try, though I occasionally need a modern hair product to keep up the front sweep (or whatever it's called) that I like to do. My hair is quite thick. I may need to switch to an old fashioned pomade.

 

[Lola Getz]

For those using Lux Soap, where are you able to by it?

I tried to order it from The Vermont Country Store but they sent me a letter saying they weren't getting any more. I'd be interested to know where people are getting it, too! Thank you!

I use Smith's Rosebud Salve
Coty powder & White Shoulders
Sunbeam Mixmaster
good old Arm & Hammer

 

[russa11]

Some of the golden age products that I use are:

Bromo Seltzer
Bag Balm
Borax
Bon Ami
Fels Naptha
Spam!
Moxie
Anchor Hocking

 

[scarlett]

I use alot of the products listed here - I never considered them "golden age", just habit of buying the same old things. When something works, it works.
Oh no, maybe I'm golden aged and don't realize it. Yikes!

 

[Dismuke]

Whenever I am visiting New York City, I always make it a point to get my fix of White Castle burgers. White Castle is very definitely Golden Era in that it dates back to the early 1920s and was the very first hamburger chain. And their hamburgers are good too - tiny little square patties grilled over onions.

While one can purchase a frozen version in supermarkets, unfortunately, there are no White Castles anywhere near Texas where I live. However, last year Krystal opened up a location here in Fort Worth. Krystal is a Southern chain that is similar to White Castle. They are based in Tennessee and they are very common in states such as Mississippi and Georgia. Krystal, too a Golden Era company dating back to the early 1930s. For whatever reason, Krystal drowns their burgers with mustard - so much so that one might as well be ordering a mustard sandwich. However, if one specifically requests that the order be made without mustard (and double checks that they actually did so, which they sometimes do not), one can have a more or less acceptable White Castle substitute.

One thing that is interesting about both White Castle and Krystal is how they illustrate the fact that portion sizes at restaurants have increased significantly over the years. My understanding is that the small hamburgers at McDonalds at one point was all they offered.

I have some vintage menus and have seen many others on the web and elsewhere. In most cases, the menus do not look especially appealing to me. One thing I have noticed is that a lot of hotel restaurants offered things like cheese sandwiches. I just can't imagine going to a restaurant and asking for a cheese sandwich. When I eat out, I tend to like ethnic foods especially very spicy food such as Indian, Tex-mex and Thai. That kind of stuff just wasn't commonplace in the Golden Era. There were some Tex Mex places, of course, here in Texas, but from what I have gathered, their menus were much more scaled down than they are today and such places were not as mainstream outside of Hispanic communities.

A few years ago, I was in Kansas where my father grew up and we stopped at an old roadside diner in a small town. The menu was rather limited and, for the amount of food that was served, a bit high priced, in my opinion. When I ordered a hamburger, I had a choice of a regular hamburger or a "hamburger de-luxe." The "hamburger deluxe" cost $1 extra and included lettuce and tomato. A regular hamburger was just the meat and the buns. My father told me that was standard practice when he grew up and that when he moved to Texas one of the the differences he noticed was that all hamburgers were "deluxe" at no extra charge. (To this day, there are no fast food hamburger chain locations within 40 miles of the small town where my grandparents lived). I have subsequently seen the hamburger/hamburger deluxe distinction made on vintage menus.

Also, vintage dining was not especially cheap. Take an old menu sometime and plug the prices into this handy cost of living calculator to factor in for currency inflation and, more often than not, the prices will turn out to be higher than what a similar meal today would cost today in a place that caters to a similar demographic.

 

[BegintheBeguine]

Sometimes when someone is on the road they miss being home so much that all they want to eat is a cheese sandwich! My dad and grand-dad said that this is why cafes advertised Home Cooking. Pundits can say "Well, why not stay home?" but for people who travelled in their jobs home cooking was what they wanted. Look at old truck stops, with pay telephones in the dining booths, even as late as the 1990s, all of the truckers were calling home.
Dismuke, that calculator is fab. Whenever my dad would say how little something used to cost at a restaurant, I would ask how much he made an hour back then.
I second a sack of Krystals as Golden Age products I still use whenever I go back South.

 

[Dismuke]

Whenever my dad would say how little something used to cost at a restaurant, I would ask how much he made an hour back then.

Here is a good benchmark - the old song "Living In The Sunlight, Loving In The Moonlight" which Maurice Chevalier introduced in 1930 and was recorded by a number of popular dance bands at the time. (You can watch Chevalier perform it here courtesy of a friend of mine who has uploaded it to YouTube) It is a very nice and snappy song and I understand it has enjoyed a revival of sorts in recent years in a television cartoon - though I haven't seen the revival to say whether it does the song any justice. Anyhow, part of the lyrics go:

"Haven't got a lot,
I don't need a lot
Coffee's only a dime"

Well, according to that Cost of Living calculator I linked to, that dime cup of coffee in 1930 would cost $1.23 today - and as the Depression deepened, the 1933 price went up to $1.58. Yes, you can buy a cup of coffee for $1.23 today - but there are plenty of places where you can get it for quite a bit less than that and one couldn't say one "only" paid $1.23 for it.

Back then, soda pop cost a nickel. In 1930, a nickel was about 62 cents in today's US currency. Sounds reasonable - except when one remembers that the standard sized soda pop back then for a name brand such as Coca Cola was 6 ounces. That would be equal to paying $1.24 today for a 12 ounce can of pop - which is quite high and usually seen only in vending machines located in places giving them a captive market. For many years Pepsi was a bargain brand and was especially popular with kids because for the same nickel, it came in a 12 ounce bottle. No doubt that people back in the Golden Era would be utterly scandalized if they could have known that it would be commonplace their grandchildren and great grandchildren to down 44 ounce (or larger) "Big Gulp" sizes soda pops.

 

[carouselvic]

Lots of products from H.J.Heinz

 

[HarpPlayerGene]

Old Products

Even though I was in the advertising/marketing business for years I'm not brand sensitive in the nostalgic sense. Bayer, sure. And some others that have been around but it's not a conscious decision. I do, however, shave by first using a brush and soap cake to lather up. I haven't yet summoned the courage to take a straight razor to my throat but then I'll have that whole thing down!