Brand Name Foods - 1939 NY World's Fair

I spent the afternoon at the library perusing The Official Guide Book of the New York World's Fair - 1939 (Exposition Publications Inc., 1939, New York).

I was interested in the promotional recipe booklets and pamphlets that were given out to the public by the food exhibitors during the course of the fair.

The slogan of the 1939-1940 New York World's Fair was "Building the World of Tomorrow." Food played an important role in this exposition, as the fair planners wanted to demonstrate that the food of the future would come from factories rather than the farms. The larger industrial food exhibits focused on conveying the message that food processing was clean and safe. American consumers were being schooled and prodded to increase their consumption of packaged and processed foods.

The Food Zone, one of the seven themed areas of the fair, was the location of the main food exhibits. Several exhibitors had their own pavilions--these included Beechnut Packing, Borden, Continental Baking, Heinz, National Dairy Products, Standard Brands, Libby's and Swift and Company. Two other buildings in this area housed smaller exhibits.

Some of the food companies and grocery products represented at the fair included Junket, Kraft Mayonnaise, Philadelphia Cream Cheese, Miracle Whip, Northwestern Yeast Company, Coca-Cola, Durkee, Loose-Wiles Biscuit Company (Sunshine Bakers), Canada Dry Ginger Ale, Curtiss Candy, B. Fisher, General Foods, Jell-O, Maxwell House, Sanka, Birds Eye Frosted Foods, Post Toasties, Walter Baker Chocolate, National Biscuit Company (Nabisco), S. A. Schanbrunn & Co. (Savarin), Planter's, Campbell's Soup, the California Olive Association, Minute Tapioca, Fleischmann's Yeast, Chase & Sanborn Coffee, Royal Desserts, Swift's Premium Frankfurters, Swift's Premium Ham, Swift's Premium Bacon, and Maca Yeast.

Listed below are a few of the free recipe booklets and pamphlets distributed at the fair by the food corporations:

• Sealtest Kitchen Recipes - World's Fair Edition.
• 121 Tested Recipes by Mary Mason - Junket
• Salads & Snacks with Miracle Whip Salad Dressing and Kraft Mayonnaise
• New Delicacies with Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese
• The Art of Making Bread at Home - Northwestern Yeast Company
• 70 Years of Good Eating - H. J. Heinz
• The Junket Folks Book of Fun
• Durkee Famous Foods - Recipes: A Century of Progress (from the 1933 Chicago World's Fair)
• Oven Melodies using Maca Yeast - Northwestern Yeast
• Intriguing New Ways to Serve Ice Cream - Sealtest

Many of the recipe booklets had references to the World's Fair printed on the cover or the inside.