ATDTDA (12) May The Force Be With You [328:34]

[Keith]

(The reason Pynchon doesn't do interviews is because it would take  
time away from looking up shit to cram his novels with.)

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[328:34] "Here I thought I was bein a real Sunny Jim."

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The first thing I remember about the Hell Gate trip was "Sunny Jim",  
who was pictured as a large young figure on a package of cereal  
called Force. We were sailing along, and on the Long Island side  
there was Sunny Jim extending 200 feet in the air. He was an  
impressive sight, with a bright suit similar to an Uncle Sam suit. He  
also had a high hat with a limerick along side the last two lines. It  
was, indeed, the largest advertising sign I had ever seen. We dropped  
Sunny Jim astern and passed Blackwell Island and other institutional  
places. It was Easter Sunday, April the 12th.
   http://www.djbc.net/wells/garfield.html

--

I PEN THESE LINES TO MINNY HANFF,

For whom I've searched from Maine to Banff.
But all my letters have miscarried.
Perhaps, Miss Hanff, you've since been married.
If from the Dumps you'd rescue him,
Please drop a line to Sunny Jim.

Sandwiched between other appeals to missing persons, the above jingle  
appeared one Sunday last month in the "agony columns" of Manhattan  
newspapers. Seasoned readers recalled Sunny Jim. He was the jolly old  
fellow with the brimless plug hat, the erect queue of white hair, the  
towering collar, red jacket and yellow waistcoat who advertised  
Force, the breakfast food, 30 years ago. Before eating Force he was a  
scowling grump named Jim Dumps (with hair queue drooping). A famed  
old jingle told his story:

Jim Dumps was a most unfriendly man,
Who lived his life on a hermit plan.
He'd never stop for a friendly smile,
But trudged along in his moody style
'Till FORCE FOOD once was served to him—
Since then they call him Sunny Jim.

Newsreaders who remembered Sunny Jim remembered also the distinctive  
six-line jingles which appeared with him in all Force advertisements.  
But few knew what Minny Hanff had to do with it. Last week they read  
more about Minny in the agony columns:

DEAR SUNNY JIM, YOUR NOTE RECEIVED
Or can my eyes have been deceived?
In thirty years, is it so strange
My maiden name from Hanff should change?
At Hotel Berkley, if he cares,
S. Jim can find his Minny Ayers.

Last week Erwin, Wasey & Co. Inc. advertising agency supplied the  
missing facts about Jim & Minny. In 1902 Minny Hanff, 17, a buxom  
Manhattan schoolgirl, began selling verses and children's stories to  
newspapers. When Hecker H-O Co., makers of Force, held an advertising  
contest, Minny conceived the character of Sunny Jim, submitted  
jingles about him. The company paid her $100 for the idea, ordered  
more verses. Minny got her friend Dorothy Ficken, 16, to draw  
pictures of Sunny Jim. For a year they were kept busy. Then, to carry  
out a $1,000,000 advertising program, artists and copywriters were  
called in to help. Songs, marches, musical comedies, sermons, were  
composed about Sunny Jim. But the product was not taken up as  
enthusiastically as was its advertising campaign. In 1909 Sunny Jim  
was relegated to a corner of slow-selling Force's carton.

Lately Hecker H-O Co. engaged Erwin, Wasey to revive Force. Vice  
President Owen Burtch Winters of the agency thought it would be good  
publicity to revive also Sunny Jim and Minny. Although it was known  
that Miss Hanff married Raymond Fuller Ayers, children's page editor  
of the New York Herald, in 1903, efforts to locate her failed. The  
"agony column" jingle was written. Few days before the jingle was to  
appear, a new Manhattan directory was issued. There was the name of  
Mrs. Minny Ayers. But the idea of advertising was so pleasing, Erwin,  
Wasey inserted the jingle in the newspapers just the same, later got  
Mrs. Ayers to help write the reply.

The Force campaign is to be resumed in April or May, with jingles  
written by grey-haired Minny Hanff Ayers.
   http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,745339,00.html

--

At about the same time as the "leper in the cigarette factory" rumour  
was damaging sales of Spuds to the point of imminent discontinuation  
thereof (i.e.,the early 1940's or thereabouts), there was a rumour  
making the rounds as claimed that Force Flakes, a popular whole-wheat  
cereal of the time, was laced with morphine. Whereupon the  
manufacturers were prompted to offer cash rewards to locate the party/ 
ies responsible for the rumour claiming that Force contained morphine.
   http://tinyurl.com/34p7kf

--

H-O Oats Force Flakes (~1900)
Sunny Jim, one of the first fictional ad characters, was a mousey  
looking grandfatherly character with spectacles, and a top hat, wore  
a high-collared, red-tailed, coat and carried a cane. He wore his  
hair braided in a pig-tail. Force Flakes were a whole wheat flake.

"Whatever you say, wherever you've been, you can't beat the cereal,  
that raised Sunny Jim!"
"High 'oer the fence leaps Sunny Jim, Force is the food that raises  
him."

A coin was isued as a cereal premium. The front of the coin had an  
image of Sunny Jim's head, the word "FORCE" and a motto which read,  
"Bring back prosperity with Sunny Jim". The flip side of the coin  
read, "Forget that times are tough and grim, cheer up, and smile with  
Sunny Jim." and "Good Luck. Good Health."

The cereal itself was described on the box as being "Toasted Whole  
Wheat Flakes with harvest bran removed. Deliciously flavored with  
sugar, salt and malt syrup".

In (circa) 1877 Force Foods produced a silver spoon with an imprint  
of Sunny Jim holding a book that reads "FORCE".
   http://www.lavasurfer.com/cereal-othercereals.html

--

"Early in 1943, the death of Mrs. Minnie Hanff Ayers caused the  
American advertising world to remember
briefly an event that had happened four decades earlier. Minnie Maud  
Hanff, then a young free-lance writer, had created the trade  
character Sunny Jim to advertise Force, the first commercially  
successful wheat flake cereal. In advertising circles, the campaign  
was remembered as a classic example of a costly failure, one in which  
the advertising created great interest in the trade character but  
failed to sell the product. At the time of Minnie Hanff Ayers’ death,  
a commentary in Printer’s Ink concluded:

Perhaps today we can bring back the name
“Sunny Jim” as a colloquial expression.
Couldn’t it be said that optimistic advertisers,
who find their advertising getting public
attention but not sales, have a “Sunny Jim”
on their hands?

Advertising historian Steven Fox repeated the story of the Sunny Jim  
campaign in The Mirror Makers, his 1984 comprehensive study of the  
origins of American advertising practices. All versions of the Sunny  
Jim story agree in certain basic details: that the campaign was  
wildly successful in getting attention for the trade character but  
failed to generate sales of Force cereal, and that this failure  
resulted in the Sunny Jim character being abandoned after a short  
time." [...]

"The trick to wealth was making a cereal product that could be  
produced, packaged, shipped, and stored on a grocer’s shelf without  
spoiling, while still appealing to the customers’ tastes. Wheat was  
cheap and plentiful; but before Force, the only cereals that had  
succeeded were Shredded Wheat and Cream of Wheat, the latter being a  
hot cereal. Force offered the convenience of a flake that could be  
served cold, and all the benefits, real and perceived, of eating  
wheat. However, his earliest attempts to sell the product sent  
contradictory messages. At first, it was not described as a breakfast  
food, but rather as “The Food that is all Food.” The box showed  
strong muscular men wrestling with chains while the promotion  
featured rosy-cheeked children (very much like the Campbell Kids that  
Grace Grebbie Drayton drew in 1904). Without a clear message, the  
product did not sell."
   Long essay at http://www.salemstate.edu/sextant/volXII_2/SEXT- 
essay-sunny-jim.htm


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