Arby's Opens in Elyria – March 1970

It sure seems like the first part of 1970 was a fast-food lover's dream. It was only a few months into the new decade, and at least two national/regional restaurant chains were staking their claim in Lorain County.

I wrote about the Arthur Treacher's Fish & Chips outlet that opened in Lorain back here. Well, here's another fast food restaurant that debuted during that same time period: the Arby's on Griswold Road in Elyria near Midway Mall.

Above is the ad that ran in the Lorain Journal on March 13, 1970 announcing that the Elyria location was now open. A few months later, the store ran an ad in the Journal announcing the winners in its Grand Opening contest (which I wrote about here).

Arby's has been a semi-regular topic on this blog for quite some time. I wrote about the cartoon glasses that you used to be able to collect at Arby’s here, and the demolition of the Griswold Road restaurant here.

I'll probably never be able to quit thinking (and babbling) about how good the chain's roast beef sandwich used to be in the early days, when it was the real thing. I’ve said before how my family used to drive to North Olmsted to get it, before the one in Elyria opened.

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There are some interesting websites that feature articles and information about Arby’s.

Click here to read about the Raffel Brothers (RB.. get it?) and how they created the Arby's chain. And this link will take you to the great RoadsideArchitecture.com website, which has a fascinating collection of photos of former Arby’s buildings as well as the original cowboy hat signs. (Did you know the original buildings were shaped like Conestoga wagons?)

Arby's Ad for Cartoon Character Glasses – August 28, 1975

Remember those cartoon character glasses that were available at select local fast food restaurants as part of a Pepsi promotion in the 1970s?

Of course you do. You might even have tried to assemble a complete set of the glasses (dated 1973) featuring the Warner Brothers Looney Tunes gang.

But it was almost impossible to accomplish. Often the store would not have the advertised glass of the week, and instead of Daffy Duck, you might end up disappointedly with Beaky Buzzard.

And even if you did manage to get a pretty good collection going, it was very likely that it would never survive the dishwasher.

Anyway, the Arby's ad above ran in the Journal on August 28, 1975. I wonder how many people were excited to get the Cool Cat glass?

I didn't go to Arby's to get my glasses. Hardees on Oberlin Avenue had the same glasses, so that's where I went. I even remember riding bikes there with a girl I liked so she could get the (ugh) Tweetie Pie glass, since the obnoxious canary was her favorite character.

We had several sets of glasses going in the Brady household, much to my mother's annoyance, I'm sure. They certainly cluttered up the bulging kitchen cabinets for a while, until the dishwasher started inevitably thinning the inventory. Then the rest of them that survived went off with us to college. (I have no idea whatever happened to mine.)

I always liked those original 1973 glasses, though, because they featured (for the most part) the definitive designs of the characters used on posters and in advertising in the 1940s and 50s.

Here's a complete set of the 1973 glasses (below), courtesy of Etsy.

A 1976 series of glasses featuring the characters interacting with each other just weren't as well drawn, and we didn't feel as bad when those broke.

Today, several generations of kids have grown up who never watched The Bugs Bunny Show on Saturday mornings – which is too bad. But for those of us who grew up in the 60s and 70s and enjoyed those cartoons, the Pepsi glasses were a lot of fun to collect.

Goodbye Arby's on Griswold

Arby's on Griswold is no more

Sept. 1971 Chronicle-Telegram ad

I didn't feel too nostalgic last month when I read that the Arby's on Griswold Road had ridden off into the sunset. It closed abruptly last December, and then was demolished on February 27.

There's not a trace of it left, not even a scattering of flattened Arbys Sauce packets.

I've got nothing against that particular Lorain County restaurant location or its employees, but I made my opinion known on this blog long ago about what Arby's was calling roast beef these days.

To me, the current Arby's advertising campaign to me is laughable. We're supposed to choose Arby's gelatinous, flavorless, faux-roast beef over Subway because the Arby's "meat" is sliced fresh? I'd eat anything from Subway over Arby's fare, even if it was sliced last May – no matter what Bo Dietl says.

And for those of you who need a reminder of what Arby's Roast Beef Sandwiches used to look like, here's a mouth-watering reminder (below): a 1967 magazine advertisement.

Arby's June 16, 1970 Ad

June 16, 1970 Lorain Journal ad

Although many of the old ads I feature on this blog are for long-gone restaurants, here's one that's still around (in a slightly newer version, that is, since the restaurant was rebuilt years ago).

The ad is for the Arby's Roast Beef Sandwich restaurant on Griswold Road near Midway Mall, and is from the pages of the June 16, 1970 Lorain Journal.

I have mixed feelings about Arby's, which I've mentioned before in this blog. Here's my er, uh beef.

When Arby's first opened in the 1960's, each store used to have a big cut of beef hanging from a chain, roasting, visible to all who entered the store. When it was ready to be sliced, it was taken down and another one was hung in its place.

The roast beef was sliced super-thin, and was nice and pink. When you added the Arby's barbecue sauce, there was no better sandwich around.

Classic Griswold Road store sign

Today, Arby's sells processed roast beef that's basically lunch meat. All the Arby's sauce in the world won't make it taste like those sandwiches of the 1960's, and more's the pity.

A look at Arby's menu today, with several chicken sandwiches, gives the impression that their roast beef sandwiches alone aren't causing customers to stampede to their stores. (Maybe beef isn't 'what's for dinner' any more!)

Incidentally, I always thought that the 'Arby' name was a play on 'RB' as in Roast Beef. But the company's wiki page indicates that it stands for the name of the founders, the Raffel Brothers.

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By the way, in preparation for this posting, I had an Arby's Roast Beef Sandwich for dinner last night (we were a little burned out on our usual Friday pizza). Since it had been about ten years since I had one, I felt that to maintain my journalistic integrity (what little I have as a blogger) I needed to sample one.

I'm sad to say it isn't any better than the last one I had. I loaded on the Arby's sauce (which was nice and tangy) but the roast beef was still flavorless and grey. The toasted bun was top-notch, but the sandwich as a whole was disappointing.

Oh well, I'll have another one in ten years.