Ad: Libbey's Meats

1944 Libbey's Meats and Regrettable Food

The other day Lidian over on Kitchen Retro featured a 1950's ad about canned peas.  Yes it was a pea parade or a carnival of can o'peas.  I don't know what the fascination was with canned peas after WWII but you certainly find alot of recipes calling for them.  Perhaps there was a bumper crop of peas for a decade after the war and the pea industry was sweating it out, "Man!  We really gotta move these peas!"  The pea pie in this ad really belongs in the gallery of regrettable foods because it just looks disgusting.  Yes kiddies it's pea night!  Mom's going to fill a pie crust with canned peas and well dad won't touch it unless there's meat so we'll add Vienna sausages.  Just to be festive we added a dollop of mashed potatoes... I don't even think I can pluralize that with a straight face.  What is that one new potato mashed and put in the center?

Over on the other side we have our old favorite, canned deviled ham.  This stuff must have been a staple in lunchboxes for many decades because I run into so often when searching for vintage ads.  Here we've made it extra special by buttering the bread, heavily.  Yes it doesn't matter that one serving of deviled ham has 60% of your daily saturated fats, we'll just add more because it's 1944 and health food is 40 years away. 

Libby's still makes deviled ham like substance in a can and vienna sausages although their market is more overseas now.  Indeed, in the Philippines, vienna sausages are considered a high class treat.  Fried in butter and served at breakfast it really shows the early morning guests you have it made.

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