In honor of the 100th anniversary of Barnum’s Animals, Nabisco asked the public to vote for one of four proposed additions to the current 17-animal menagerie. The choices were koala, penguin, walrus, and snake(!). Nabisco is presently tabulating the results and will shortly announce the winner.
The 100th anniversary of Barnum's Animal crackers got me thinking. I know people collect food-related items, but how do they store them? Do they keep the packaging intact along with the edible contents? And what would an animal cracker look like after 100 years, anyway?
Needless to say, 100-year-old Barnum’s Animals boxes are scarcer than hen’s teeth. Originally designed to be hung from Christmas trees (that’s what the cord is for!), almost all the boxes eventually found their way into the trash. An hour’s search of the Internet revealed numerous Barnum’s Animals pins, tins, puzzles, signs and pillowcases, but not one 100-year-old cardboard box up for sale. Had a very early collector had the prescience to save one, however, how would he have preserved it? A look at other food-related collectibles may provide an answer.
Cereal boxes were the first to come to mind, and Steve Wronker’s Cereal Box site provided a number of suggestions relevant to all food-staples collectibles (http://pages.prodigy.net/funnybusiness3/cbox.htm).
One of these was to dispose of the package’s contents. Why? Because it’s the packaging, not the contents, that’s of interest to most collectors, and even if you seal the package in plastic, it is likely that the foodstuff contains insect eggs (such as from the ubiquitous saw-toothed grain beetle). Sooner or later, the little critters will hatch, develop, and eat their way out of the box!
To store a package flat, Steve’s site advised using a hair dryer on its highest setting to soften the glue on the end-flaps and then open the package at both ends, taking care not to tear the board. Remove the contents, flatten the package, and store in a magazine or comic bag, preferably one that is re-sealable.
To display a package intact, use the hair dryer to open one end only, remove the contents, and fill the box with packing peanuts. Then, reheat the glue on the open flap, reseal, and store the box, preferably in a Lucite case available from many collectibles supply companies.
You know those little packets of ketchup, mayo, and relish you can pick up at almost any restaurant? The Condiment Packet Museum Web site has pictures of what eventually happens to those packets if the contents are not removed - gross! (http://www.clearfour.com/condiment/cindex.html). They suggest carefully removing the contents-- avoiding any damage to the package graphics - and cleaning, drying, and then storing the packets in the pockets of trading card pages.
Macaroni and cheese? Candy wrappers? Milk bottles? It appears that people collect just about everything. I’m surprised that anything ends up in landfills!
Here are some additional sites for more information regarding foodstuff collectibles:
**Barnums’s Circus Minimus,** a Modern History of Animal Crackers, by Jennifer Frey, Washington Post Staff Writer
http://www.washingtonpost.com/ac2/wp-dyn?pagename=article&node=&contentId=A32819-2001Dec27
**History, with pics, of Barnum’s Animals.** The site also hosts games and contests with prizes ranging from monoculars to projection TV’s.
http://www.nabiscoworld.com/Barnums/default.htm
**Ian’s Macaroni-and-Cheese Box** Collection http://www.geocities.com/macandcheesebox/index.html
Jurgens Chocolate Wrapper Collection
http://homepages.fh-regensburg.de/~caj32087/choco.htm
Timeline of 19th and 20th Century Foodstuffs (Did you know that Log Cabin syrup debuted in 1888? Or that Cheerios was originally called Cheerioats when it first appeared in 1941?)
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Rhodes/4190/timeline.htm
