Other Crap

Here's some baby boomer nostalgia

Back in the 1950s and early 60s, all kinds of free gifts came inside consumer products. Most of you children of the 50s can remember the "authentic navy frogmen" inside Kellogg's cereals, but do you also remember the wild stuff that used to come inside boxes of detergent?

Breeze and Bonus had the craziest idea. They gave away free towels inside their largest sizes and handcloths inside the smaller boxes. Was there room for any detergent? How big was the box? If I had been the product manager, I would have gone all Oprah on the promotions and just put a car in there.

Actually, I gave that some thought. Imagine if they had put the keys to a really nice car in one out of every million boxes. That would have sold some freakin' Breeze. (It would also have been an illegal lottery, but still ...)

I couldn't find any old TV commercials for Bonus (which was a Proctor and Gamble product) or Breeze, but here's a print ad, just so you know I'm not going completely dotty.

By the way, Porter Waggoner and Dolly Parton used to talk regularly about this in-pack premium for Breeze.

Almost, but not quite, as crazy was Duz detergent's packing of full-sized water glasses in their boxes. This time I have the actual commercials: