Betty Crocker
There’s always been a bit less than meets the eye to Betty Crocker, the now-octogenarian but ever-youthful face found on the General Mills baking products bearing her name. It’s not just that Betty cannot possibly look that good after so many years. It’s that she never existed in the first place. On the other hand, that little fact didn’t stop her from being voted the second most famous woman in America.
Betty Crocker was “born” in the offices of the Washburn Crosby Company in Minneapolis in 1921. As one of the largest milling companies in the U.S. (later to combine with other millers into General Mills), Washburn Crosby had been receiving hundreds of questions from consumers about baking with its products. To make their replies more “personal,” the company invented the character Betty Crocker, combining the “warm and friendly” name “Betty” with the surname of a former Washburn executive, William Crocker.
For the first few years, Betty was just a signature, but in 1924 she made her radio debut in a company-sponsored cooking show. As the show was not carried on a network, Betty was actually played by a different actress in each of the thirteen cities where the show was broadcast. Eventually, The Betty Crocker School of the Air became a national show and ran for 24 years.
In 1936, America finally got its first peek at Betty Crocker in company ads and on product packages. In an early example of “morphing,” an artist combined the features of all the women who worked in the company’s Home Service Department to arrive at an appropriately friendly “look” for Betty. Betty’s image changed about once every decade in the following years, and today is personified with a “multicultural” image.
Bacardi
Yes, that’s a bat on the label. Don Facundo Bacardi Massó was only 15 years old when his family emigrated from Spain to Cuba in 1814. After a career in wine importation and extensive experimentation with different formulas for making rum, in 1862 Don Facundo established the Bacardi distillery in Santiago, where he and his brothers filtered their rum through charcoal, a process Don Facundo had developed.
Don Facundo’s wife, Dona Amalia Lucía Victoria Moreau, suggested that the bat would make a good symbol for the new Bacardi rum. She had noticed a colony of fruit bats living in the rafters of the distillery, and knew that in Cuban lore bats were considered harbingers of good luck and prosperity. The distinctive visual trademark of the bat, in an era of widespread illiteracy, helped to make Bacardi the most popular rum in Cuba and eventually one of the world’s leading brands.
Alpo
No, it’s not dog food promising to turn your dog into a mountaineer, nor does the name come from the excited noise Rover makes when he spots you with a can opener.
Alpo was one of the first canned dog foods marketed in the U.S., in 1937, and was originally called “All-Pro,” probably meaning “all protein.”
Unfortunately, there were, as the lawyers say, trademark issues, and in 1944 All-Pro was forced to change its name. But it didn’t go very far, dropping only one “L” and the “R” to create the euphonious but meaningless “Alpo.”