Imperial Sugar Company Cookbook Campaigns

Kellie Michalek Abbott found some old Imperial Sugar Company television ads on YouTube.  There are quite a few from several eras if you're interested.

She posted one on Facebook from a 1962 ad campaign for 'My First Cookbook.'   Boy, that brought back memories.  My mother (Sally Rachuig Kelly) handled cookbook requests for Imperial from about 1958 to 1962 or '63.

When Imperial ran a cookbook campaign, we got tons of letters.  No exaggeration.  My father would bring home several mail sacks of postcards & letters.  Mother often got help from my father's aunts.  They loved addressing the envelopes.  Bruce & I (plus my dad) stuffed the envelopes.  Actually, we called it 'sacking' the cookbooks.  (The envelopes were large.)

It was a perfect money-maker for a home-maker like my mother.  The girls in the ad have a 'Shake & Bake' accent -- if you remember those ads ("... it's SHAKE & BAKE, and we heyulped ..."), you'll know what I mean.

Here's a link to the 'My First Cookbook' tv ad.

Here are some pictures from May, 1961 to verify my story.  This one was taken in the kitchen of our home on Oyster Creek Drive.  You see my father's aunt, Nelle Salter Harman on the left.  My father is in the back.  My mother is on the right.  The woman looking over her shoulder & looking remarkably like the cartoon character Maxine is my grandmother Victoria 'Vic' Salter Kelly.

This next one shows me on the left & Bruce on the couch sacking cookbooks.  Notice the large stack Bruce has beside him.  The white object closest to the camera is not a defect in the picture.  It's the box that contained the cookbooks.  We'd put the sacked envelopes back in the box and take all the boxes up to Imperial's offices on the 2nd floor of the shopping center.  There were times when we'd fill a single-axle, 2-wheeled trailer (about 6' x 8' bed) several layers deep with bulging cardboard boxes.

Here I am with our dog Herman.  Notice the stack of stuffed envelopes in the left foreground.