Smitties Twins Ad – Jan. 20, 1955

If there's one conclusion that you can draw while looking through old Lorain Journals of the 1950s and 60s, it's that we certainly liked our meat. 

Not too many vegetarians back then, apparently. We were a real carnivorous county.

Besides the usual grocery store and convenient store ads spotlighting various meat specials, the newspaper was filled with ads for local butchers and meat markets such as Polansky's and Tony's Meats, as well as regional and national meat processors such as Sugardale.

Perhaps our proximity to Toledo resulted in the Schmidt Provision Company running the ad above for Smitties Twins in the Lorain Journal on January 20, 1955.

'Smitties Twins' was a catchy way of marketing two similar prepackaged Schmidt sausage products – one pork (Porkettes) and one beef (Beefettes).

Both meat products are promoted using cute piggie illustrations. (What, no cute li'l steer with a bow tie?)

Anyway (in case you're wondering), this is a different Schmidt's than the one in Columbus, Ohio that has the restaurants with the Bahama Mama® sausage. Here's the (sausage) link to that Schmidt's website.

As for the Schmidt Provision Company in Toledo, it seems to have been first gobbled up by John Morell & Company in January 1964. It later became part of the huge pork packing empire owned and operated by Sandusky brothers Jack and Bill Waldock in 1970. 

Vintage Schmidt's shortening can on eBay