- I don''t recall the laundry detergent kitchenware promotions, but we did get a set of glassware from a gas station promotional giveaway.
- My mom ran a household with eight kids on practically no money, so she knew how to stretch a dollar. She never went for detergents with premiums, because they cost more and the premiums themselves were usually low quality. It was cheaper to buy decent glasses and dishtowels (and detergent) on sale.\
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Having said that, if she happened to catch a big enough bargain on Duz detergent, we may have ended up with a mis-matched glass or two in the back of the cabinet over the years.
- Who remembers when Dolly Parton used to flog Breeze detergent and the "flardy tahls" therein on [italic]The Porter Wagoner Show[/italic]?
- Don''t you just love it? And I got it in a box of breeze.
- I think cartoon jelly jars/glasses were much more common. I don''t recall what you mention, OP, but I might be too young. Maybe it was a 1950s thing.
1960 - ?
- Heck yes. And I still use them.
- Very common in the 50s. Cheap glass.
- R6 also has turkey meatballs in the freezer and two towels.
- Not that I recall, but r5 is right about the jelly glasses. We had dozens of them. I think my nephew still has a few of the best ones. %0D\
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Gas station glasses & lots of kitchen things "bought" with Betty Crocker coupons (like boxtops) and Green Stamps. The A&P would have dish sets - this week the plate is $.025, next week the coffee cup is $.10 and so on.
- It does in Duz
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ax-H0WSxuDo&feature=related
- To show the kind of classy guy I am, my "good" china was purchased piece by piece weekly from Pantry Pride Supermarkets.
Cheap ass eldergay.
- We didn''t have anything from inside laundry detergent boxes, but we had plenty of jelly glasses, sour cream glasses, and a set of dishware that you purchased by the piece each week at the grocery store. %0D\
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I, on the other hand, was a connaisseur of things that came inside cereal boxes. I was very skilled at extracting the prize and then pretending to my younger brother that we had gotten screwed and there was no prize in that particular box.
- No, my mother wouldn''t buy that stuff. We did have jelly glasses, Bama maybe? And my father and grandfather would bring home glasses and steak knives that were gas station premiums.
- LOL, R12. You are absolutely evil! I like you.%0D\
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I guess your younger brother has serious trust in the universe issues. If cereal boxes can''t be trusted, what can you trust?
- If they packed a towel in a box of detergent wouldn''t you be getting a lot less product? Seems like a gyp.%0D\
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We had a whole set of 70s stoneware from the grocery store, and my parents still have and use their steak knives from the Shell station. My favorite Flintstone''s jelly glass is still at their house and I use it every time I visit.%0D\
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I don''t think they even put prizes in cereal any more, do they? I remember getting special eyeglasses with no lenses and little aluminum mirrors on the inside so you could see behind you! Not quite X-ray vision but not bad for a box of Alphabets!
- [quote]I think cartoon jelly jars/glasses were much more common. I don''t recall what you mention, OP, but I might be too young. Maybe it was a 1950s thing.\
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That''s my recollection, too. Outside of the Flintstone jelly glasses, glassware and china were premiums at gasoline stations and at grocery stores (I also recall the latter having an off-brands of encyclopedias and plastic statuettes of the presidents -- with a white styrofoam semi-coliseum for their display.)\
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There were references to glassware having come in laundry detergent, but these were mentioned in the past tense, as a joking reference to something especially cheap.\
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(And no, my mother never allowed such things in her house.)
b.1960
- R15, Alphabets put those glasses in the box for the dyslexic kids. They weren''t a toy.
- Do Cool Whip containers count? I would try to describe just how many empty Cool Whip containers were in my Mother''s house when we cleaned it out, but you wouldn''t believe me anyway.\
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And bread wrappers. Empty, cleaned, and folded bread wrappers.
- My mom got her everyday cutlery piece by piece with Betty Crocker boxtops. Early 1950s.
- [quote]If they packed a towel in a box of detergent wouldn''t you be getting a lot less product? Seems like a gyp.\
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The product would still be filled to the declared weight. The premiums didn''t displace the product.
- Don''t forget Quaker Crystal Wedding Oats.
http://www.amazon.com/Quaker-Crystal-Wedding-Oats-oz/dp/B0002XIBXS
- R18, an aunt used to wash and reuse aluminum foil. See what growing up during a depression does to you?
- Me [R3]! And I really wanted my Mom to buy one of those detergent boxes with a towel in it, but she refused.
- Welch''s had the jam/jelly glasses here on the East Coast. \
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Bama had the jelly glasses up until the late 90s, they could still be doing them. I picked up a few Bama glasses before Odd Lot closed, they had a cute set of Rocky, Bullwinkle, Boris & Natasha glasses.\
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I remember glassware being featured at supermarkets, some stores were still doing this way into the 1980s. They''d usually feature a different piece every week.\
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My mom still has some Mikasa pieces sold at supermarkets during the 80s, they''re really heavy dinner, cake plates and soup bowls, the coffee cups weren''t made well, they all broke.
- My Mom used to get Melmac Dinnerware at the local grocery store. Every week you would get free pieces and the option to buy more at a huge reduction. That was when there were still grocery stores in Detroit.
- I remember getting soap in the form of a green dinosaur from a Shell station. This had to be 64 or 65.
- I remember racing to the shampoo section of the store and just sitting there playing with the Prell bottles that had the pearls inside. I would turn them upside down and watch the pearl drift slowly down, and when the pearl was almost at the bottom I would turn them back upright and watch the peal float all over again.\
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My mother would never buy Prell though. It was Suave for us.
- Wasn''t Melmac the stuff that "couldn''t" break? My mother bought a set I recall. And being a little queen I TRIED to break it because it was so ugly.\
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Damn shit wouldn''t break.
- One thing I love about old commercials is how the husband would be so pissed off about his wife''s horrible coffee. Apparently women in the 60s had no clue how to make coffee. In some of the commercials an old blonde Norwegian woman would show up and tell her what she was doing wrong and all would be well again.
- I have a full set of china from a gas station promotion from the 50s. It''s quite reasonable in terms of look and quality. My deceased partner''s mother got it one piece at a time.
- I don''t remember anything like that, but I seem to remember getting record albums at gas stations around Christmas time...or did I imagine that?
JohnEric
- I still have some of my mom's Melmac pieces, the ones which weren't discolored, I kept.
The rest she dumped. Melmac easily got scratched and the coffee/tea cups badly discolored. I remember there was some type of special cleaning powder (not Bon Ami, something else) made specifically for Melmac, but if you didn't remember to use it each time you washed the Melmac, the stains permeated.
I also have a Melmac salt & pepper set, a sugar bowl and creamer. For some reason my mom never used them, so they're in excellent shape.
Up until a few years ago, you could get Melmac pretty cheap on eBay, now anything retro sells for outrageous prices.
My mom still has so many sets of dishes and other glassware, I have no idea where she keeps it all. She does regret giving away her original set of Fiestaware, which she never used. It was in flawless condition when she gave it away.
Anyone remember the Hottle bottles, the small glass bottles which many restaurants used to serve tea? They had rubber around the neck of the bottle and a removable lid. I got a nice collection on eBay years ago.
- We had the jelly glasses, but I also remember my mother buying dishes at the grocery store. Each week they''d have a different piece on sale. One week it would be dinner plates, the next bowls etc.
- They used to also have a 45rpm record, you could cut out of the back of some cereal boxes.
- Melmac was supposed to be unbreakable although I met a fellow in college who claimed to have broken a plate across his sister''s face. I tend to believe him.
- We had the complete Duz collection. We bought towels and small apliances with SH green stamps.
- Yes, my mother purchased the detergent with the towels in the box. Those things lasted forever! We also got dishes from the A&P. The glasses -- which I still have -- may have also come from some promotion. They are small juice glasses.
- "Do Cool Whip containers count?"%0D\
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That was "free Tupperware" as far as my family was concerned. We used them for leftovers and had whole shelves of them in the fridge, all growing green and gray biology experiments inside because we always forgot about them. %0D\
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My mother hated real Tupperware - she said it always felt greasy and you could never get it completely clean, even with Dawn detergent. Our neighbor had so much Tupperware that she had a special cabinet for it. Of course my mother thought that was disgusting.
- I remember the SH Green and the Plaid stamps. \
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IIRC, you''d go to a center to redeem the books for small appliances, glassware or decorative stuff. Later on they added watches and more personal items.\
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Unfortunately, there was never anything for me and my siblings from those damn stamps. I have no idea how my mom had time for collecting stamps and other freebie nonsense, as she always worked, took care of us and the house.
- [quote]They used to also have a 45rpm record, you could cut out of the back of some cereal boxes.\
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We could never make those work. It was the cutting/punching of the center hole that did us in every time. We could never get it centered.\
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National Geographic occasionally had the pull-out records, and those were very cool. I bet I listened to the one that covered Churchill''s funeral 50 times.
- [quote]Melmac was supposed to be unbreakable%0D\
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I broke a plate once. I threw it across the room & it must have hit the wall at just the right angle to snap it in two. But generally, I think you could drive over it & nothing would happen.
- Flintstone''s jelly glasses from Welches. Had a lot of those. "Archie''s" records printed on back of Post cereal boxes. Used to cut out the record when the box was full and sometimes cut through the bag liner. Big mess! Dolly and Porter pushing Breeze and those cheap towels. "You cain''t buy it!" "I cain''t?". Fizzies punched out from foil sheet. Alka Seltzer with sugar. Vile! S&H green stamps. Mom charged everything so they sent all the stamps at the end of the month with her statement. Huge books of stamps!
Damn I''m old!
- I hit my brother over the head with a melmac dish...and he died!
- I always wanted the Kool-Aid pitcher and the little matching cups, but my Mother freaked out over how much sugar you had to add to make the stuff and refused to buy any.
- I had no idea what melmac was. I googled and discovered it was Alf''s home planet. On further reasearch, I discovered that it was this stuff...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melamine_resin
- Enough with the "eldergays", OP.\
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It''s not charming or cute and you sound like an insufferable douche. And I''m probably younger than you.\
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That is all.
- This thread is bringing back lots of memories. We did have the towels from detergent boxes, my mom for some reason was obsessed with towels and/or sheets NOT matching. When I got my own place I made sure everything matched and looked nice and she had a tantrum you had to see to be believed. I remember using the Flintstones jelly glasses and I think we had a Kool-Aid pitcher once. Definitely had the 45''s from the back of cereal boxes, I loved music from the time I was born.
metalhead
- [quote]I remember getting soap in the form of a green dinosaur from a Shell station.\
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Shouldn''t it have been in the shape of a scalloped seashell?\
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The Sinclair Gas stations'' signs featured a green dinosaur with a long neck -- maybe that was where your dino soap came from? Sounds cute, wish I had some.
- You''re right, R48. It was Sinclair. Forgot about them.
The Dinosaur Guy
- R46, it is kind of cute term of endearment and unique to DL. If anyone is getting their feelings hurt, then it hasn''t been discussed on any threads that I''ve seen.
- I didn''t realize so many here were so young. Yes, we got quite a lot of glasses and dishes at the movies, at the Green Stamp Store, and at grocery store promotions. All %0D\
I now have left is a great set of aluminum water tumblers that long ago contained cottage cheese. Pretty colors, too.%0D\
Yes, I''m old--74.
- [quote]All I now have left is a great set of aluminum water tumblers that long ago contained cottage cheese. Pretty colors, too.\
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R51, did/do you also have the little elasticized knit socks that fit around the bottoms of the tumblers to keep the cold metal from hurting your fingers? Our socks came in different colors with white stripe. I''m pretty sure we got the tumblers with Blue Chip stamps (we didn''t eat cottage cheese), not sure about the socks.
over 60
- I remember dishes, glasses and towels in detergent boxes, jelly glasses, 45''s on cereal boxes, Plaid and S&H Green stamps, freebies from gas stations... \
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I''m 47 and grew up in NJ suburbs of NYC. \
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And I don''t mind being classified as an "eldergay", it''s kind of a badge of honor.
- We had lots of Welch''s/Flintstone jelly glasses and Sau-Sea shrimp cocktail glasses.
- Jesus Saves.....green stamps
humour from the sixties
- "Sau-Sea shrimp cocktail glasses"%0D\
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OMG, I forgot all about those! We used to make mini ice cream sundaes in them, and sometimes put pudding in them with a tiny blob of whipped cream on top. Very dainty and refined.%0D\
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We had a set of those brightly colored aluminum tumblers too - everything always tasted more ice-cold in them. And we had the little socks too. My special one had a green stripe to match the emerald green aluminum (queen in training here).
- I forgot about Sau-Sea shrimp glasses - IIRC they looked like the ones Howard Johnson''s used for ice cream parfaits.
r53
- We had Noah''s Arks from the ARCO gas station, and each week you could get a new, different pair of plastic animals if you could convince your dad to fill up there.\
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This was c. 1974 at Main & 140th for my Hillaire DL friend.
- For R29
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kovsZZw0LwU
All those actors are dead now
- I have no idea where or how my mother got all of the glasses, dishes and other kitchen stuff. I don''t know what stores she went to and I''ve never heard of green stamps, whatever the hell that is. Everything just kind of magically appeared in the kitchen and I never wondered where the dishes, glasses, cups or anything else came from. I grew up in the 1980s and early 1990s, it that makes a difference.
- Did your moms ever serve chocolate pudding in the wine glasses like the commercials?
- Damn! Forgot about the Sau-Shrimp glasses. %0D\
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Mom died in 85, dad last year. I bet some are still in the kitchen cabinet. I''m going to look next time I''m at the house.
- I remember Mason Jars being used as glasses. Yeah, I was raised in the South. %0D\
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I also remember the toys in Cracker Jacks and most every cereal being far more superior to the crap now. %0D\
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I also remember that no one had any food allergies. %0D\
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Weird. I used to sniff glue as a teen so this was the best I could come up with. %0D\
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- My Dad had an antenna ball from (I think) Union 76. He would carefully attach it to the antenna whenever he was in a high-stress parking situation. He lived to walk straight to the car, the bigger the parking lot the better.
- R27. I forgot about Prell shampoo. I loved the pearls too! I can smell Prell right now. Damned I wish I had some prell - would stay home saturday night and wash my hair.
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4016/4496595561_42899af75a_z.jpg
- Yes.\
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I''m 51. Guess this makes me an eldergay, huh?
- In the coffee commercial at r59, isn''t that Conard Fowlkes as the husband, who was in "Dark Shadows"? He just died fairly recently, I heard.
- You''re absolutely right, R67. He died in 2009.
- The only thing I ever got in a box of detergent was a dead bat.
- You''re looking at $100-200 dollars of the highly collectible Blakely \
Oil frosted glasses, one given per fillup through the 60''s at this SW regional chain. They also gave away nice quality pottery and chinaware, equally prized.
http://farm7.static.flickr.com/6002/5984517581_228f20405d.jpg
- I don''t remember records which you could cut out of cereal boxes, but I remember flex-disc records. \
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They weren''t always of music, sometimes they just promoted something, basically a commercial was on the disc. Later on, in the 1970s, they were available again, added on to music magazines.
- Anyone else remember 45s packaged inside potato chip bags? Sometimes you would get something good like the Jackson 5 or the DeFrancos, but usually it was shit like this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SC_CBLYx-YY
- Flintstone Jelly Glasses
http://image.timepassagesnostalgia.com/watermarked/imagese3/e303flint2.jpg
- Archies Cereal Box Records on Post Super Sugar Crisp.\
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You had to cut it out of the back of the box.\
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4 different singles (all unmarked)\
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3 of them SUCKED ASS!\
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But 1 of them was "Sugar Sugar" and you had to keep buying the cereal to get it.
http://www.mrbreakfast.com/ucp/366_6348_ucp.jpg
- S&H Green Stamps\
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Licking them and putting them in the books used to be MY job.
http://www.hobbyidea.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/Sh-Green-Stamps-picture.gif
- R69 has all the fun! A dead bat is even better than a bar of green dinosaur soap.
- Yep. I had the job of licking and sticking the Green Stamps. My mom would always get dreadfully practical things. When I was 9, I had my eye on an oil paint by numbers set and begged enough that my father finally relented and got it. I had a lot of fun doing it, but my mother was livid at me and my father about it and carped on us for the two months it took me to finish it. I swear to god that my mother had it framed out of spite and it hung in our living room for years (much to my mortification when high school friends came over). It hung on the living room wall for about 16 years until they sold the house.
- I remember those, r31! An entire set of classical favorites and Disney theme albums, too. I still have the classical ones :)
- Remember those, too, r34; I was so excited to get Bobby Sherman''s, ''Gettin'' Together'', off...Alpha Bits? Sugar Crisp?
- Oh, r58; you just took me back. I forgot all about the little Noah''s Arks. Thanks.
- [quote]Did your moms ever serve chocolate pudding in the wine glasses like the commercials?\
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Always. We were just classy like that.\
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Never chocolate though. My Mother went for the more elegant flavors like pistachio and French vanilla, and the Cool Whip was always at the bottom, never on the top.
- Pizza Hut furnished out fancy glasses. Mom brought four neighbors along so we could get a full set of the commemorative Christmas glasses. The rims chipped and you always cut your hands while washing them.\
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The Ronco glass cutter for turning wine bottles into glasses really made my mother roll her eyes. One year she received two separate sets of ''glasses'' from alcoholics on different sides of the family.\
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There was a sawdust filler / white sugar scare that prevented us from purchasing white bread or cereal, so we didn''t get prizes. We also didn''t get jelly glasses because my mother canned her own to control the pectin.
- Sinclair Gas Stations! Yes, we had the green soap. Also, we got those blowup dinosaurs for the beach/pool. Anyone from Chicago will remember the Polk Brothers plastic Santa that they got when they purchased their appliance. They were life size, and everyone had them
http://www.worthpoint.com/worthopedia/life-size-santa-claus-out-door-lighted-figure
- [quote]The Ronco glass cutter for turning wine bottles into glasses really made my mother roll her eyes. One year she received two separate sets of ''glasses'' from alcoholics on different sides of the family.\
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Oh Fuck, I had forgotten about the Ronco glass cutter. I had visions of filling the world with green glasses made from empty wine bottles. I might have made 4, maybe 5 tops, before sheer boredom relegated it to the basement.\
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Now that I think about it, my Mother must have wasted no time throwing them out, because I remember making them, but no recollection of ever actually using them.
- In the 30s and 40s, blue Shirley Temple mugs, cereal bowls, and pitchers came inside cereal boxes. These are now in antique stores. (No, I''m not that old at all!! I have found these in thrift stores also.)
anonymous
- I got 10 place settings of Blue Willow china at Kroger years ago. I just happened to be in the store the last day of the promotion, and bought all the accessory pieces for 80% off. I have matching platters, serving pieces, butter dish, salt and pepper shakers, and 16-12 oz coffee mugs, among other pieces. I never use any of it anymore.\
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Our Gulf station had a steak knife promotion, and if you bought at least 8 gallons, you could get a steak knife for 29 cents. Forty years later, and those are still the best steak knives around!
- .
- I remember trading stamps! I''ll never forget the battle that raged between us kids to decide what luxury item we could get with those damn stamps. We were separated into two factions: Half of us wanted a sewing machine, the other three wanted a row boat. Our parents made us have a contest to see who got all the stamps--building a house of cards! I almost knocked the whole thing down with my dangling bracelet, but we won when Tiger jumped on Greg, and the whole thing came tumbling down. We got to the store after it closed (they were going out of business), but Cindy put on her sad face and the man let us in. We came home with a color TV for the WHOLE family!
Marcia Brady Logan
- When I was a child, I remember National Grocery Stores a had promotional giveaway of green bumpy textured glassware pieces. There was a juice glass, a rock glass, a tumbler, and also a matching pitcher. They were pretty but broke easily.
National also had a promotion around the same time for Funk and Wagnall's "budget style" encyclopedia that my mom collected for a buck or two. They were small, about the size of a desk bible and almond colored with red, black and gold leaf header label on the spine.
Even though they were made cheaply in comparison to regular encyclopedias, they weren't half bad content-wise. They had a couple of glossy header pages at the front of each edition with a dozen or so pretty color photos to fancy them up a bit. I think we were only missing the TUV edition.
I remember once, an encyclopedia saleslady came to the door and I was the only one home. She reminded me of Maryjane Croft from The Lucy Show. She asked me what kind of encyclopedias we had and I grabbed an edition of our older Compton's Encyclopedia rather than go for the newer but cheaper Funk and Wagnall's set we had.
She snootily said this encyclopedias is a 1960 edition, like how dare you show me a fifteen year old encyclopedia. I just stood there at the door thinking well too bad lady, it's been a slice.
- [quote]I don''t think they even put prizes in cereal any more, do they? I remember getting special eyeglasses with no lenses and little aluminum mirrors on the inside so you could see behind you! Not quite X-ray vision but not bad for a box of Alphabets!%0D\
%0D\
I kept mine for about 6 years. I would watch people behind me on the bus/train and without them knowing it. Love those glasses.
- We must have had a dozen of the Tab soda glasses with an hourglass shape. They looked cool, but I was always frustrated by the fact that the ice cubes usually wouldn''t fit through the "waist" part.\
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And we had a full set of plastic ice cream dishes, in a variety of colors, courtesy of the milk man.
- Most of my Christmas gifts were conceived with Green Stamps. Hated those damn things.
- Looking for glassware that was distributed thru Jewel and Eisner grocery stores. You got a stamp for every so many dollars u spent and when u had a number of stamps u could turn in for the glassware of the week.
https://www.facebook.com/autismlady/posts/4090877238749%3Fcomment_id%3D4104434%26notif_t%3Dfeed_comment_reply
Lisa%20
