More Help from General Foods

My last post was about an older advertising booklet from General Foods Corporation that was published back in 1970. Today's booklet, Home Meal Planner, is also from General Foods (1961, 3rd Edition, 2nd Printing, 32 pp), but was published about ten years earlier. It's not nearly so pretty and cheerful to the eye as was the prior booklet. See how that appealing to the consumer's senses thing works?--not just for the food itself, but also for the advertising. I'd choose the first one over this one any day just because I think it looks better.

This booklet is illustrated completely in black and white, with the exception of a few tinted pages and drawings, which are pretty boring in my opinion.

This woman's hairdo is spot on for the one my mother had back then.


The Home Meal Planner promises big results from its 32 pages.

"With it, anyone can:

• Choose from a menu or serve the family meals that are balanced, right in food values, and delicious to eat



• Select the foods that make meals fit particular tates, individual cooking talent, one's budget, the season.



• Make meals varied and interesting with new flavor combinations and easy recipe ideas. This takes no special know-how. The Home Meal Planner will do it all--almost automatically!"

To do this, the booklet covers a lot of ground. Section headings include:

• Foods Needed Each Day



• Skill in Planning Meals



• Meal Plans and Menus



• Plans for Snacks



• Food Choices



• Quick Tips from General Foods Kitchens



• Look on the Grocer's Shelves



• Services...Back of General Foods Products

One of the pages suggests seven menu examples for Breakfast. Their cereals are prominent in each of the meals. I don't know about you, but when I eat cereal, I eat cereal, perhaps with some fruit, but that's all. Here, they have cereal going with pancakes and cereal with eggs, and cereal with toast. The Summer Breakfast has cereal with eggs and coffee cake. That's a lot of food! The Luncheon and Dinner menus have a lot more variety.


They refer to the different age groups in amusing ways--little tots, school children, teen-agers, oldsters. Now it would be the children's specific age groups, or perhaps seniors or just plain old "kids."

Although it doesn't say so, this is surely a photo of the Birds Eye frozen fruits:


In this booklet, as well as the later one, they also show a picture of some of their products. I don't see that the frozen Birds Eye Tiny Taters made it til the beginning of the next decade. D-Zerta was still around though sugar-free Jell-O replaced that product in 1984. I'm not sure when they discontinued Swans Down Cake Mixes. I don't recall ever seeing those, but perhaps I wasn't paying enough attention.

Here's a listing of their products which is not nearly extensive as the one ten years later: