A fun piece of advertising memorabilia | ||
| Cereal Premiums1 of 10 |  |  |
Newfld loves this.
WhenIsraelbelieves loves this.
ho2cultcha loves this.
vetraio50 loves this.
Watchsearcher loves this.
fortapache loves this.
dav2no1 loves this.
Reise loves this.Create a Show & TellReport as inappropriate
Posted 2 years ago
Elainep
(59 items)
I acquired this chap in a charity shop, where he was being sold as as dog toy for £0.50 gbp.
I liked the look of him and purchased him so that I could research his background . I don’t believe we have this product in the uk.
Create an account or login in order to post a comment.
Thanks to Reise for the love.
Interesting..not the type of cereal I used to eat. I was not familiar with this brand. First introduced in 1901. Seems it went out of business in 2013...112 years was a good run.
"To advertise Force, Minnie Maud Hanff, a freelance jingle writer, invented the character Jimmy Dumps, a morose character who on eating the cereal was transformed into Sunny Jim."
https://www.oldest.org/food/cereals/#:~:text=Force%20was%20originally%20created%20in,based%20cereal%20besides%20Shredded%20Wheat.
dav2no1, Thanks for clearing up whether Force was a British or USA product:
From your linked article:
*snip*
Eventually, Force became a staple in Britain as it lost favor in the United States. Sunny Jim and his jingles were slightly modified for the British audience and they took to him immediately.
*snip*
(From the wikipedia article "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Force_(cereal)." I used tinyurl to link it here, because CW S&T doesn't like underscore characters in URLs.)
*snip*
First produced in 1901 by the Force Food Company in Buffalo, New York
*snip*
https://tinyurl.com/5n8fncxs
Elainep, Thank you for bringing this rag doll to CW S&T. Not only is it cute, it ultimately cleared up for me the spelling of "Sunny Jim."
I use that nickname a lot, and it's all Mike Myers' fault. His Scots father character in "So I Married an Axe Murderer" used it.
Here it is, misspelled, so I'm not the only person who wasn't clear about the spelling:
*snip*
Stuart Mackenzie: Well, it's a well known fact, Sonny Jim, that there's a secret society of the five wealthiest people in the world, known as The Pentavirate, who run everything in the world, including the newspapers, and meet tri-annually at a secret country mansion in Colorado, known as The Meadows.
Tony Giardino: So who's in this Pentavirate?
Stuart Mackenzie: The Queen, The Vatican, The Gettys, The Rothschilds, *and* Colonel Sanders before he went tits up. Oh, I hated the Colonel with [h]is wee *beady* eyes, and that smug look on his face. "Oh, you're gonna buy my chicken! Ohhhhh!"
Charlie Mackenzie: Dad, how can you hate "The Colonel"?
Stuart Mackenzie: Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes ya crave it fortnightly, smartass!
*snip*
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108174/
I realize that the character was a stereotype, but I found it hysterically funny.
Whoops, more Sunny Jim dolls and adverts:
https://cerealoffers.com/Cereal_Partners/Force/1920s_-_30s/Sunny_Jim_Rag_Doll/sunny_jim_rag_doll.html
Thanks so much to dav2no1 and keramikos for such in depth information obtained in such a short space of time . I was not at all familiar with this brand, having been fed Kelloggs as a child in the 50’s. I didn’t know force had been sold here in the uk. I am familiar with the phrase Sunny Jim and seem to remember my father using it when we were one step away from trouble but I had never associated it with this cereal .
Thanks so very much I’ll read all of your information when I have some time to concentrate later.
Thanks to Reise, dav2no1 and fortapache for the love.
You're more than welcome. :-)
I'm so happy to have the spelling and etymology of "Sunny Jim" finally settled.
"I am familiar with the phrase Sunny Jim and seem to remember my father using it when we were one step away from trouble"
*wheeze*
Yeah, that was my sense of it. One calls a person who's perceived to be either a bit obtuse, or running afoul, or both "Sunny Jim." };-)
Here's the clip from the move where the father calls his visitor "Sunny Jim," and goes on a rant about the Pentavirate conspiracy:
I Hated the Colonel - So I Married an Axe Murderer (2/8) Movie CLIP (1993) HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKRFlNryaWw
For a bonus, the clip where the father is makes cruel fun of his younger son's head:
An Orange on a Toothpick - So I Married an Axe Murderer (3/8) Movie CLIP (1993) HD
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqycJpRdVaY
i can't believe anyone bought a cereal called 'Force'. That word connected to food of any kind seems like it would be a no-go, but it was the first breakfast flakes and lasted a long time! i don't remember it at all. maybe only 7 or 8 people ate 'Force Flakes' in the last 40 yrs of the company?
Thanks to Watchsearcher, Newfld and vetraio50 for the love
Dav2no1 I’m about half way through your entertaining snips ! Glad I made you wheeze it makes me smile to think of my dad using the Sunny Jim ‘tag’ I haven’t thought of it in many years.
Hi ho2cultcha
Thanks so much for your comment.
Until now I had no idea force was sold in the uk at all. I thought I had picked up a piece of US advertising memorabilia .
I guess, for myself, that force was probably meant to encourage good health, maybe ‘a force for good’.
But I agree, taken at face value, force would seem very odd today.
Give credit where credit is due..those are Kera's snips, not mine..
dav2no1, No worries, I was mostly indulging myself.
You know that by the time I'm done adding comments to a post, it's so loaded that nobody can tell what's going on anymore. };-)
FYI, I'm not the only person who found those scenes from SIMAAM irresistibly funny:
*snip*
The moment where Tony laughs at Stuart's Colonel Sanders impression was not scripted. Anthony LaPaglia really did lose control and laughed at Mike Myers.
Mike Myers's performance as Stuart Mackenzie was based on the mannerisms of his own father.
When the actors did the first cast read-through of the script, Charlie's father, Stuart, had not yet been cast. Mike Myers read that character's lines and the filmmakers so enjoyed his interpretation that they realized he could play that role as well.
*snip*
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0108174/trivia/
Wow! Guys you are a fountain of knowledge on some many fronts! ‘Props’ , if I’m not misusing the term, to both of you . Thanks for making me smile and being so informative.
Elainep, Thanks. :-)
I guess "props" IS New World English slang, huh?
The word nerds at stack exchange kick it around:
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/73636/whats-the-etymology-of-props
I'm gonna give props to Miss Aretha, because while she didn't write the song "Respect" (Otis Redding did), she changed the lyrics sufficiently to make it her own, and even Redding ultimately acknowledged that:
https://morrison.sunygeneseoenglish.org/2019/03/31/respect-the-difference/
Despite Force cereal and Sunny Jim being USA creations, addressing people as "Sunny Jim" seems to be British slang that I've adopted.
Thank you. :-)
Keramikos thank you and Dave2no1 too. I’ve been thoroughly entertained by your exchanges this week. Isn’t it interesting that something as small as an advertising rag doll can lead to such fun!
Don’t really know about ‘props’ have heard my granddaughter use it !
Speaking of the colloquial use of ‘Sunny Jim’ I seemed to cause hilarity at our B&B last week by saying ‘cheerio’ to a young couple from the US who thought it was a cute thing to say! But, I’m sure, therein lies another discussion