Meyer Goldberg Ad Featuring Huckleberry Hound

Portion of a October 3, 1962 Meyer Goldberg ad from the Lorain Journal

I saw this great ad on microfilm the other day at the library, and had to post part of it here. It's from October of 1962, and combines a great Lorain memory – Meyer Goldberg super markets – and one of my favorite cartoon characters: Huckleberry Hound! (Give it a click for a closer look.)

Longtime Lorainites fondly remember grocery shopping at Meyer Goldberg's. In 1962, the chain was still in its infancy, consisting of only two stores – one on South Broadway and one at Oakwood Plaza. (I'll do a proper treatment of the store in a future blog series.)

But getting back to our old pal Huck. The cartoon hound was created by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera and was their first major TV star. The Huckleberry Hound Show debuted in 1958 and was sponsored by Kellogg's cereals. It was the first cartoon to win an Emmy award.

In 1962, Huck was still enormously popular with adults as well as kids. Consequently, Kellogg's used him and Yogi Bear in promotional campaigns that played out on the backs of Kelloggs cereal boxes, national magazine ads and super market newspaper ads, as shown here.

Note that the Meyer Goldberg ad also has a strange little SOS circle logo to the right of Huck. SOS stood for Sabin Oral Sunday and referred to a campaign at that time which encouraged people to get their three doses of the Sabin oral polio vaccine. You can read more about it here.

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Huck and Yogi were pretty big in our house while I was growing up – we watched the cartoons regularly (I still do, on DVD) – so I can't resist posting this photo.

It's probably the oldest of all my personal possessions: a Huckleberry Hound and Yogi Bear ramp walker made by Marx©. According to this ramp walker website, it dates from 1962 – same as the above ad.

I've had this toy all my life and looking at it brings back a flood of happy childhood memories.

I'll wrap up this post with a look at the closing credits of the original Huckleberry Hound Show, where Huck and Cornelius the Rooster pick up all of the Kellogg's cereal characters (Snap, Crackle & Pop, Tony the Tiger, Tony Junior, Smaxey the Seal, and Sugar Pops Pete) in their jalopy.