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March 1936. Savannah, Georgia. "Waterfront warehouses." Large-format nitrate negative by Walker Evans for the Farm Security Administration. View full size.
The trademark of Bic pens and other products is the Bic Boy
whose head was inspired by the ball inside of their ballpoint pens around 1960 when I worked there. He is a schoolboy holding a pen behind his back.
Still bottled (canned, actually...) in Birmingham:
All I could find: 1950, Savannah City Directory, 116-118 West Bay Street. Older buildings are there, but not the ones pictured.
Tterrace, I always called those folks "Speedball men," because they could easily be drawn using a certain Speedball drawing or lettering nib. I can't remember which nib, but it's probably down in my art supply box with cobwebs all over it!
The very same year (a month ago in Shorpy time), Crushy / Ball Head Man pops up on a playhouse poster in New Orleans here.
[In fact, he's the one in the lower left of my illustration below. - tterrace]
I love how the back of the delivery trucks seem to be designed to resemble a six-pack container for returnable bottles!
Another beverage? A forerunner of YooHoo perhaps? Why am I surprised it never took off.
[That's on the building next door, presumably a distribution depot for the Nucoa Butter Co., makers of the margarine. - tterrace]
As you may have noticed, Crushy is a member of that popular Art Deco advertising art family I like to call the Ball Head Men. Two other examples below, courtesy Vintagraph. In recent years the Ball Head Men have enjoyed a revival of their careers and can now be seen on crosswalk signs and bathroom doors all over the world.
So, presumably Golden Spike is the analog of Canada Dry, while Buffalo Rock is a Vernor's sort of drink? And to meet this Crushy (if that really _is_ his name), one slips in through the loading dock and makes for the employees' break room? I dialed 4332 for the answer to those and other queries, but apparently nobody's home.
When I was eight years old in the mid 1950's, I attended a two week long summer camp in the Irish Hills of Michigan. The camp did not have a camp store or PX. However, after the mandatory post lunch rest period each day, the cabin counselors would give you a red plastic bingo card chip and a metal washer. These would be traded in at the camp activity hall for an ice cold Orange Crush and a candy bar. Still love orange pop and chocolate to this day. I try to limit it to once a month. Later when I joined the Boy Scouts, the summer camps had PXs. A cherry Coke with a bag of salted peanuts poured in the cup was popular back then.
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