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contents
Consumer Products
Transportation
Fads & Fun
For The Kids
At Work
| Consumer Products ....in use during the 1930s | ||||
 meals & snacksmeals & staples Birds-Eye frozen vegetables Tastee Bread Bisquick (1931) Oscar Mayer wieners Skippy peanut butter (1933) Beech-Nut baby food (1931) Land o' Lakes butter Carnation canned milk Kraft macaroni & cheese (1937) Spam (1937) spaghetti White House evaporated milk cereals Kellogg's Corn Flakes Quaker Oats Post Toasties Kix (1937) Wheaties Wheat Puff-Its |
snacks Planter's peanuts Fritos corn chips (1932) Ritz crackers (1932) Sunshine crackers Lay's potato chips Mrs. Japp's potato chips Cracker Jack Jake's potato chips desserts Jell-O Hostess Twinkies (1930) N.B.C. butter cookies Oreos Sunshine cookies chocolate chip cookies (1930) candy Tootsie-Pops (1931) Life Savers Sugar Babies (1935) Three Musketeers (1933) Snickers (1930) | |||
 Potato chips were invented in the 1850s, and were first sold in stores in the 1890s. At first, they were sold in tins or dispensed from bulk containers and barrels. The first potato chip bags were introduced in the 1920s, and were made of waxed paper or waterproofed cellophane. In the 1930s, bags were made of an airtight, moisture-proof paper known as glassine. Potato Chip Tins |
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 beverages soda Hires Root Beer Coca-Cola Pepsi-Cola Barq's Root Beer Orange Crush 7-UP Cliquot Club Ginger Ale Shasta Pale Dry Ginger Ale (1931) Nehi Royal Crown Cola (1934) White Rock Ginger Ale Nichol Cola |
 other beveragesKool-Aid drink mix Ovaltine Bireley's fruit drinks Stillicious chocolate drink A&P Eight o' Clock coffee Libby's tomato juice Dining Car coffee Mott's Apple Juice (1938) | |||
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The first soda bottle vending machines were introduced in 1937. After depositing a nickel in the coin box, you turned a handle to rotate the lid, and pulled the next available bottle out through the opening. In the 1930s, most soda bottles were either 6 or 6 1/2 ounces. Nehi soda was sold in nine-ounce bottles, and Pepsi-Cola and Royal Crown Cola introduced 12-ounce bottles during this decade. For home consumption, you could buy a Hom-Pak containing six bottles in a cardboard carton. In 1934, soda bottles began to sport the new baked-on color labels. Milk formed a layer of cream on top, which expanded two to three inches in cold weather. Cream-top bottles provided space in the bottleneck for the cream to expand. The first successful beer cans were introduced in 1935. That year, Krueger's Finest Beer was the first brand to be sold in cans. By the end of the year, 37 American breweries were also selling their beer in steel conetop and flattop cans. Flattop cans were punched open with a church key can opener. Soda cans, however, didn't fare quite as well. Cliquot Club Ginger Ale experimented with conetop cans in 1938, but the citric acid destroyed the can's lining, resulting in leakage, flavor absorption problems and can explosions.  7-UP was introduced in 1929. At first, it was called Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda. The name was changed to 7-UP Lithiated Lemon-Lime in 1930. Later that year, lithium was removed from the recipe and the name was shortened to 7-UP. Beer Can History Conetop Beer Cans |
   
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 health & beautycosmetics & skin care Helena Rubenstein Max Factor Coty Hudnut cold cream Harriet Hubbard Ayer Lucky Brown Liquid Liptone lipstick Jonteel fragrance Chanel No. 5 Shalimar Evening In Paris Blue Waltz Paris by Coty |
hair care wave clips Breck shampoo (1930) Palmolive shampoo brilliantine Kreml shampoo & hair tonic soap Lux Woodbury Ivory P&G White Naphtha Lady Fair Palmolive health & grooming Kleenex tissues Schick electric razor (1931) Burma-Shave nylon-bristle toothbrushes (1938) | |||
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Before 1938, toothbrushes had hog-hair bristles. They did a fairly good job of cleaning the teeth, but they also retained moisture and accumulated bacteria. DuPont developed nylon in 1934 and introduced the first nylon-bristle toothbrush in 1938: Dr. West's Miracle Tuft Toothbrush. The new nylon bristles were tough, resilient and impervious to moisture.
"Stop blowing your nose in my Cold Cream Kerchiefs!" During World War I, cellucotton was a highly-absorbent cotton substitute used for bandages and gas mask filters. In 1924, Kimberly-Clark began selling cellucotton sheets as "Kleenex Kerchiefs, The Sanitary Cold Cream Remover." However, most people used them as disposable handkerchiefs, which prompted Kimberly-Clark to start packaging and selling them for that purpose in 1930. In the 1930s, Kleenex tissues came in a variety of colors and sizes, and were dispensed from pop-up boxes. These innovations were introduced in the late 1920s. Kleenex Through The Decades |
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other products Argo starch Brillo pads Mrs. Stewart's laundry bluing Rinso laundry detergent Oxydol detergent | ||||
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Transportation | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
*60 percent of families owned a car in 1930. *In 1933, a brand-new Chevrolet cost $445. Under ideal conditions, it could get 26 miles per gallon. Most of the time it got 18-20 miles per gallon. *The 1938 Packard was the first car to come equipped with an air-conditioner. *In 1929, Ford introduced the first station wagon. Terraplane Station Wagon
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Fads & Fun radio stuff In the early days of radio, it was fun to scan the dial for distant stations. When you found a new station, you could write to them with the details of the program you heard. If the information matched their records, they sent back a card imprinted with their call-letters. Serious collectors sent preprinted cards, which came back with a stamp affixed to the front and were placed in a special album. Collecting these verified reception cards and stamps was a very popular hobby.  "We acknowledge with thanks your communication reporting reception of a recent program. Your comments are of distinct value as practical contributions to the success of broadcasting and the planning of the programs of station WGY." --verified reception card from WGY in Schenectady, 1934 Members of Little Orphan Annie's Secret Society could send away for rings, badges, bracelets, Ovaltine shake-up mugs and decoder pins that deciphered Annie's secret code. Radio Orphan Annie's Secret Society Ekko Reception Stamps Radio Station Letterheads & Reception Cards
|   Now you can have a bank vault, just like Jack Benny! recreation at home bridge parties: In the evening, married couples enjoyed inviting another couple over for dinner and bridge. Housewives belonged to bridge clubs, and young people at college gathered in the dorm to play bridge. party games: Simple games weren't just for kids anymore....adults enjoyed them, too. Many games were silly: sitting on balloons to break them, spearing peanuts in a bowl with a hat pin, or spooning dried beans into a pie pan balanced on your head. Others tested your mental abilities and powers of observation. Some, like musical chairs, were just plain fun. card clubs: Housewives belonged to bridge, pinochle and bunco clubs. Members took turns hosting the weekly parties, where the ladies played cards, gave out prizes and ate a delicious luncheon provided by the hostess. In my town, the groups had clever names like the Gingham Nine, the Easy Aces and the Peppy Eight. Monopoly: During the Depression, the inventor of the board game Monopoly thought it would be fun for people who didn't have much of anything to pretend to be wealthy real estate tycoons, if only for a few hours. Parker Brothers put the game on the market in 1935, and it was an instant success. stamp collecting: Another hobby that didn't require a great deal of money, stamp collecting became very popular in the 1930s. depression gardens: Chunks of coal were kept in a planter with some water. When salt was dumped on the coal, crystals formed. With a little imagination and some artificial coloring (laundry bluing for blue "flowers," mercurochrome for pink "flowers"), you could grow a beautiful crystal garden. Monopoly Who Invented Monopoly? Make A Depression Garden
|  Serve Coca-Cola at your next party.... always delicious & refreshing! For The Kids paper dolls Most little girls played with paper dolls. Popular paper doll subjects included Shirley Temple, Sonia Henie, Buck Rogers, Gone With The Wind, Jeannette MacDonald, the Dionne quintuplets and Britain's Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret Rose. Shirley Temple Paper Dolls Virtual Shirley Temple Paper Doll reading material Ted Geisel was a magazine cartoonist who took the name Dr. Seuss when he wrote his first children's book in 1937: And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street. The rest is history! Big Little Books (1932) Nancy Drew (1930) Dr. Seuss (1937) sports & action toys marbles Daisy air rifle (1938) yo-yos pedal cars Radio Flyer wagons vehicles & role playing electric train sets cowboy outfits space toys die cast trucks & fire engines balsa wood model airplane kits other toys & activities Mickey Mouse collectibles Shirley Temple dolls (1934) Campfire Girls imagination & ingenuity Money was scarce in the 1930s, so kids had to be very creative when it came to their toys. Round oatmeal boxes cut in half lengthwise made ideal doll cradles, and pieces of scrap wood nailed together made great dollhouses. Paper dolls were cheap, but cutting the ladies from mail order catalogs to make your own paper dolls was cheaper.
|  Shirley Temple paper dolls  Chicago boys playing marbles 
All In A Day's Work common jobs soda jerks elevator operators bellhops milliners telephone operators doctors making house calls railroad workers the milkman streetcar conductors telegram delivery boys cigarette girls the ice man tailors Pullman car porters hours & working conditions In 1935, the Wagner Act gave workers the legal freedom to unionize. The 1938 Fair Labor Standards Act prohibited children under 14 from working. This law didn't apply to paperboys. Shorter work weeks became common in the 1930s. The standard six-day week began to vanish as more employers granted Saturday afternoons off. Other employers followed the example of the Ford Motor Company and switched to a five-day work week. Paid holidays, yearly vacations and an eight-hour day were also becoming more common. typical salaries bus driver................................$1,373 per year secretary.................................$1,040 per year -----------................................$15 per week manager of loan company.........$45 per week department store clerk............$5 to $10 per week dressmaker..............................$780 per year textile worker............................$435 per year teacher...................................$1,227 per year college professor.......................$3,111 per year hired farm hand.......................$216 per year live-in maid..............................$260 per year female domestic servant...........$1 per day (wages for maids and farm hands may have been low, but keep in mind that many of them were live-in workers who had their lodging and meals provided for them) doctor........................................$3,382 per year congressman..............................$8,663 per year
|   In 1930, 70 percent of all milk sold in the United States was distributed door-to-door by the milkman. Divco trucks were first used for milk delivery in the 1920s, but many milkmen continued to use a horse and wagon well into the 1930s. 
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