Customer Reviews

Krazy Kid's Food!

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Just flick the pages of this book and marvel at the ingenuity of the food technologist, page fifty-eight shows a 1965 packet of Kellogg's Strawberry Kreme Krunch, `Chunks of REAL ICE CREAM Freeze-dried in a nutritious cereal' or page seventy-nine with a 1960s packet of King Stir wands with `SIX IMITATION ROOT BEER FLAVOR DRINKS'. Everything is either flavor-enhanced, sugar-coated or artificial, just the way kids like it too.

All the colorful packets come from a huge collection the two author's have amassed over the last fifteen years, starting with a 1930s 5c packet of Mickey Mouse Cookies (which looks in surprisingly good condition considering it is over sixty years old) and moving through the years to the Seventies. The boxes and containers are predictably designed with bright colors and sledgehammer graphics to catch the eye of tiny tots in the supermarket aisles. An interesting exception is the 1970s very graphic Screaming Yellow Zonkers! Popcorn snack box which was black with some small colored lettering.

The food makers knew how to pitch their packaging for maximum sales so they used the popular heroes of the time, Superman, Popeye, Dick Tracy, Hopalong Cassidy (I wonder if he ever ate those Burry's cookies) and as the packets show, in more modern times the makers created food with their own heroes, like Cap'n Crunch or Puddin' Head.

If you grew up in the Fifties, Sixties or Seventies you'll enjoy this well designed paperback of colourful food packaging, mostly breakfast cereals but also drinks, cake-mixes, candy, Jell-O, ice cream, cookies and more. There's nothing artificial about this book!

Excellent pictures; not a lot of words since none are really needed. Come! Gawk at the advertising! The best part about it is seeing how things have gotten more politically correct (like how Fritos had the 'Frito Bandito' ad with a Hispanic on it, with a promise of a 'Free Moustache in Six Packs.') Well worth the money. It's a small book, but again, these are bright pictures of boxes. How big do you really need it?

What a great book of baby boomer memories put together. Saturday mornings eating Quisp & Quake or quenching your thirst on Pillsbury's "funny face" drinks, this book is real pleaser in every way ! Thanks Dano !

This 200 page, color book, has well taken photos, excellent picture quality and a sweet taste of some of the rarest food packaging items ever recovered from the past. A small oversight is the accidental omission of the books physical size being just... 6" X 8". Though small, it is priced very inexpensive, for being an all color book.
One can easily see, that many, many hours went into collecting, upgrading, photographing, positioning, photoshoping and then converting ex-garbage into displayable art reflecting eras and ideas gone by. Some cool examples of the well thought out, sometimes ingenious opposite page layouts and product placements are seen on pages: 98 & 99, 104 & 105, 130 & 131, 58 & 59, 72 & 73 and 118 & 119. Undeniably, all the layouts are entertaining, saliva drippin and flavor wondering images for kitchen tabletop display book.
Though the book has overtone feelings of when you were on the grade school playground, " Naw, naw...na, na...naw... I have this and you don't" connotations, the graphics and selection of content are perfect for copying, creating or making your own reproducible products. And what's better, there are no warnings anywhere in the book about copying, so you can use ANY image you like... for anything.
One last weird point, there are so many people thanked in the credits, yet the only pictured items were from the authors uncompleteable collection. Leading to the disappointing conclusion... this is a GOOD book, but could have been a GREAT book, if the authors had also used items/images from other collections, that they just didn't have in their own collection. I give it a C4.0 outa C5.0

I really enjoyed this 200 page journey to childhood. It's a book that brings back some wonderful childhood memories. Some of the foods I never tried because I was either too young or lived in Kansas where we didn't get everything that was on the market. The authors have collected some very interesting food item boxes (some still have the food in them) over the past 15 years. They give you a brief history of advertising to children in the beginning of the book and then let the items speak for themselves. They do have dates on the pages with the photographs but that's all. They have items that go back as early as the 30's with a box of Mickey Mouse cookies. In fact Mickey was the first childs chacter to be used in advertisement to children. It's interesting to see how the characters grew up as children became more sophisticated. In the 60's and 70's no longer would The Lone Ranger or Hop Along Cassidy sell cereal and made way for other icons. I actually bought the book because I have two memories that have haunted me for a long time and my friends think I'm nuts and made them up. One was a gum that came in ice cream flavors, chocolate, vanilla and strawberry. Also a peanut butter from 1974 that came in those three flavors. I screamed and jumped for joy (I'm 37) when I saw the two items in there. The Ice Cream Gum and Koogles Peanut Butter. YEH!!! Now whose crazy? I have friends who remember Fizzies and have talked about them, but I never saw them. Thinks to this book, I too can share in the memories. Also all the cereals that we comsumed. Suger this, artificial that. The breakfast cereal with the freeze dried ice cream touted as being nutritional was a scream. I loved seeing all these old items in the beautiful color photographs. Each page has a new and exciting product on it. The companies who put this food on the supermarket shelves really knew how to sale to the kids. Not only is there food, but paper cups that are still in the Warner Brothers box from 1960, and other paper goods. As I said some of the products I don't recall but I love pop culture. This would make a great birthday or early Christmas gift for someone feeling a bit old. It'll bring them back to childhood and a time when all they cared about was getting the submerine out of the bottom on the cereal box before their brother did. It's not a hard read, you can finish it on your lunch hour, but all your co-workers will want a peek at it too. You'll be a hit at the office with your little Krazy Kids Food book.

Absolutely loved this book! My son (8 years old) and I thoroughly enjoyed the marvelous pictures and great cartoony art for products from days gone by! The binding of the book is weak and the thick pages tend to fall out, but other than that,...a treasure to keep and refer back to.

The graphics alone are worth the purchase of this. This book is jam packed with 20 years of pop culture that will leave you a little nostalgic and a little perplexed.

Fun for all!

This all color , 200 page book, has well taken photos, excellent picture quality and a sweet taste of some of the rarest food packaging items, that have ever been recovered from the past. A small oversight, is the accidental omission of the books physical size being just... 6" X 8".
One can easily see, that many, many hours went into collecting, upgrading, photographing, positioning, photoshoping and then converting ex-garbage into displayable art reflecting eras and ideas gone by. Some cool examples of the well thought out, sometimes ingenious opposite page layouts and product placements are seen on pages: 98 & 99, 104 & 105, 130 & 131, 58 & 59, 72 & 73 and 118 & 119. And I couldn't believe it was only [$$$], for an all color book. Undeniably, all the layouts are entertaining, saliva drippin and flavor wondering images in this coffee table display book.
Though the book has overtone feelings of when you were on the grade school playground, " Naw, naw...na, na...naw... I have this and you don't" connotations, the graphics and selection of content are perfect for copying, creating or making your own reproduced products. And what's better, there are no warnings anywhere in the book about copying, so you can use ANY image you like... for anything.
One last weird point, there are so many people thanked in the credits, yet the only items used were from the authors uncompleteable collection. Leading to the disappointing conclusion... this is a GOOD book, but could have been a GREAT book, if the authors had also used images from others, that they just didn't have in their own collection. I give it a C4.0 outa C5.0.