Reddi-wip Ad – June 1954

Fresh from Baumhart Berry Farm

It's strawberry season!

I missed it last year, so I've been keeping a close eye on the roadside stands in the Vermilion area. The farms where you pick them yourself have been open for a week or two, but I've been having trouble finding a stand where you could just stop and buy a pint. Fortunately, while Baumhart Berry Farm is a U-Pick farm, they also have some that you can just buy. (They put a special sign out by the road to let you know when they have some.) So I made my second stop of the season there last night and the dee-lishus photo above is the result.

Freshly-picked strawberries taste so much better than their grocery store counterparts (which are harder, flavorless and have a white core  – ugh). Plus some of the squashed strawberries at the bottom of the container are often quite hair-raising.

So what do you do with strawberries? Besides just eating them and putting them on my cereal, I took a hint from the ad below, which ran in the Lorain Journal on June 3, 1954 and had some strawberry shortcake.

It's a pretty good ad, advertising the product to make the shortcake (Bisquick) as well as the topping (Reddi-wip). I like the look of anticipation on the kid's face as he greedily squirts Reddi-wip on his mountainous dessert.

I didn't make Bisquick biscuits to have with my strawberries, but they were just as good with my store-bought dessert cups and obscure brand dairy topping.

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UPDATE (June 8, 2024)

Apparently the kid with the striped shirt and crewcut was featured in magazine ads as well.