Giant Tiger Ad – Sept. 12, 1963

A few of you may remember the Giant Tiger discount store chain, which I've featured many times on this blog. Above is a full-page for the Elyria store at 230 Broad Street, which ran in the Journal on Sept. 12, 1963. Back then shoppers used the Layaway plans that were available, so that's why the ad had a Christmas theme.

There's plenty of interesting things to check out in the ad, including the Safety Eye Running Lights with 21-candle power bulbs, which according to the ad would "attract the attention of approaching motorists – DAY OR NIGHT!!" Today, running lights are quite common, and even required in some countries.

What's amusing to me in the ad (as usual) is the appearance of Kellogg's cereals Tony the Tiger doing a side hustle as the Giant Tiger mascot. (I've devoted several posts to this.) What's really funny is that whoever prepared the artwork decided to also superimpose Tony's whiskered face on top of that of a cigar store Indian.

But if you look closely at the part of the ad devoted to boxes of matches, however, you see what's probably the real Giant Tiger mascot on the package.

We've seen that rather tame-looking cat on a piece of Giant Tiger paraphernalia (below) on an earlier blog post. 

Yet, the GrrrrRRREAT one was appropriated time and time again.

Anyway, the tale of two kitties eventually came to an end with the name change to 'Gaylords.' 

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At the time of the above ad, Lorain's store hadn't been built yet (destroying the Hopewell homestead at 1867 Elyria Avenue in the process). It wouldn't open until August 1967 (which I wrote about here).

Giant Tiger Tales

A few of you (besides Alan Hopewell) may remember that Lorain used to have a Giant Tiger discount store on Elyria Avenue at 20th Street. The first outlet in our area was at 225 Broad Street in Elyria, followed by the one in Lorain.

I wrote about the Lorain store's 1967 Grand Opening here.

What amused me about the discount chain was that in many of its late 1960s Journal newspaper ads, none other than Tony the Tiger of Kellogg’s Sugar Frosted Flakes cereal fame is used as the Giant Tiger advertising mascot (which I wrote about here). Whether this was done with or without Kellogg’s consent I’m not sure. Nevertheless, this tiger poaching went on for several years.

It wasn’t until recently however that I discovered that another tiger did indeed prowl the Giant Tiger newspaper ads before Tony. Below is the logo block from a Giant Tiger ad that ran in the Journal on December 10, 1959, promoting the Elyria store. The tiger looks downright menacing, like he should be chasing Mowgli around the jungle.

By the mid-to-late 1960s, however, Tony had replaced the generic tiger. Below is a logo from an October 24, 1968 ad.

A month later, the logo type had been updated – but Tony remained.

By June of 1969, Gaylord’s National Corporation had acquired 82 percent of Giant Tiger stock and changed the name of the 15-store chain to Gaylord’s Giant Tiger (which I wrote about here). 

Here's the logo that was used in late February 1970 combining both names.

Eventually the Giant Tiger portion of the name was dropped.

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Meanwhile, up in the Great White North...

A Canadian discount store chain named Giant Tiger (with no connection or relation to the American chain) has been in business since 1961. There are more than 250 stores across Canada.

The Canadian Giant Tiger stores have had the same tiger mascot since the early days. His name? Friendly. Here are a few of his early appearances in ads.

A portion of a December 1966 ad

A logo block from a December 1970 ad

Recently, Friendly has been downplayed in the ads, but he still makes public appearances at company-sponsored events.

Courtesy Giant Tiger

Courtesy Giant Tiger

New Name for Giant Tiger – June 14, 1969

The Giant Tiger department store (later, Gaylord’s) in Lorain has been another one of those recurring topics on this blog over the last nine years.

I covered the store’s August 1967 Grand Opening here, as well as its destruction during an April 1974 wind storm here. I wrote about the store’s curious use of Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger mascot in their advertising here, and featured some readers’ reminiscing about the store here. Lastly, I posted a few Halloween ads, including this one from 1968.

So it’s appropriate to post this article (below), which captures the moment when Giant Tiger became part of the Gaylord’s family of stores. It appeared in the Lorain Journal on June 14, 1969.

Giant Tiger Halloween Ad – Oct. 24, 1968

Here's another one of those discount store Halloween ads that I seem to dig up every year. This ad for Giant Tiger appeared in the Journal on October 24, 1968 – 45 years ago today. As usual, Kellogg's Tony the Tiger has been curiously appropriated for a Giant Tiger ad!

The costumes depicted in the ad are pretty generic – a monster (with the word 'monster' written across his groin in case you weren't sure), a devil, a girl with a pagoda on her head, a senorita, a skeleton wearing a jaunty cap, a witch (I think it's a witch because it's holding a broom), a girl with some kind of weird wig, and a creepy clown.

The two largest costumes shown in the ad are a skeleton playing a clarinet and the Esso Tiger (star of the popular "Put a Tiger in Your Tank" ads).

Actually, it's fairly ironic that the Esso (later Exxon) Tiger appears in the ad with Tony the Tiger. In the late 1990s, Exxon was using their tiger to sell food at Tiger Mart convenient stores. Kelloggs sued them, claiming that the Exxon Tiger infringed on the Tony the Tiger trademark. Apparently the case went all the way to the Supreme Court before a settlement was reached.

I think Kellogg's should have sued Giant Tiger instead.

Anyway, your child can "put a tiger in his tank" on Halloween and go as the Esso Tiger – because that costume is on Ebay right now! But hurry – Halloween is next week!

Readers Reminisce about Giant Tiger & Gaylords

Since my posts on Giant Tiger and Gaylords, I received a few emails from friends about shopping at those two stores.

Sandy from Sheffield Lake emailed me to tell me about her 1967 Giant Tiger memory. "I remember being in the checkout line at Giant Tiger with my Mom, Dad and brother," she said.

And then it happened: her brother accidentally sprayed automotive de-icer into his eyes.

"I didn't see it happen," she said, "but all of a sudden, my brother was whisked away to the emergency room at St. Joe's. I remember the massive eye patch that he came home with."

Sandy was only four at the time – and she can't remember if her father ever bought the de-icer he needed!

"Now stuff is so securely packed you almost need an engineering degree to get things open," she notes.

Meanwhile, historian and archivist Dennis Lamont emailed me to tell me about a memorable purchase from Gaylords.

Dennis worked in management for many years at the steel mill. "It was very convenient having a store like that right outside the plant gate," he noted.

"I bought my first pocket calculators there for $9.95 each. One for me and one for our department clerk," he remembered. Before the calculators, Dennis pointed out that they "still had the ancient mechanical calculators" where you had to "turn the crank toward you to add and away from you to subtract."

"With the pocket calculator, it was instant and we were amazed, it took so little" he remembered. "This was back in the days when spreadsheets were 11x17 blue ruled paper with a red double line column marker to the left, carbon paper and #2 pencils, no xerox machines, etc."

Special thanks to Sandy and Dennis for their anecdotes!

Gaylords is Destroyed – April 1974

(Journal photo by Michael Pugh)

I did a post about the former Giant Tiger/Gaylords building on Monday, and a few of the comments (including one by Alan Hopewell) mentioned the storm that "blew the roof in."

Well, here's a photo (above) of just that. It ran on April 15, 1974 (just as Alan remembered) on the front page of the Lorain Journal with headline, "Gaylords Store Destroyed As 'Hurricane' Wind Hits." No one was in the building when the roof caved in because the store was closed as it was Easter Sunday.

The article included a brief interview with the builder, Alex Fodor of Alex Fodor Realty Company, Cleveland. He stated that he had "absolutely no idea" why the roof toppled under the winds.

"The construction was 100 percent correct," said Fodor. He added, "It was architect supervised and built according to plans."

Strangely enough, at the time of the disaster the building was owned by the Journal.

The article also had a photo of the building as it looked prior to the disaster (below).

The Giant Tiger Mascot

One of the funnier aspects of the regional Giant Tiger chain (for me anyway) was their appropriation of the most famous and beloved cartoon tiger used in advertising to moonlight as their mascot.

I'm talking of course about Tony the Tiger.

I can't imagine that Kellogg's would have approved, but nevertheless Tony the Tiger himself appeared in many Giant Tiger ads that appeared in the Lorain Journal during 1967 and 1968. The first time I saw it, I imagined that it was just some lowly paste-up artist's idea of a gag. (After all, I was a paste-up artist at one time and I would have thought it was an amusing thing to do.) But then I saw that Tony's appearance in the ads was a regular thing that went on for quite a while.

There was even a logo arrangement with Tony right next to the company's name (see above).

No doubt Kellogg's provided newspapers with clip art sheets for use when laying out one of their cereal ads; perhaps in this case, the Giant Tiger artist – fighting a last-minute deadline – thought,"Oh well, a tiger's a tiger!" and then slapped the Gr-r-reat One onto the ad.

Anyway, about a year ago, I happened to be scrounging around in a thrift store in Cleveland (appropriately enough called the Unique Thrift Store) where I found this scrap of paper in the records section (below). It reveals that maybe at one time, another tiger prowled around in the Giant Tiger ads.

Giant Tiger Grand Opening August 1967

Here's an ad for the grand opening of a store that many of you longtime Lorainites will remember: Giant Tiger, at 20th and Elyria Avenue. The ad ran in the Lorain Journal on August 23, 1967 – 45 years ago – announcing the store's opening the next day.

The ad artwork is a little jangled looking; the words DISCOUNT STORE are jammed in there pretty good. But's a nice illustration of the building.

A small, front page Journal article that same day read, "Mayor Woodrow Mathna and Miss Lorain County, Jan Musarra of Avon, will assist in brief ribbon-cutting ceremonies, which, in turn, will launch a three-day spree of special events, prizes and gifts.

Captain Penny

"Tomorrow at 7 p.m. Captain Penny, Cleveland television personality, will chat with youngsters and provide free autographed photos. Saturday afternoon Cleveland Browns football stars Paul Wiggin and Dick Schafrath will visit with customers.

"There will also be live bands, surprise guest stars; free gifts for everyone with a color television topping the list."

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I don't think we ever shopped at Giant Tiger. There were just too many other stores closer to us (such as Big Town) or on the way to Midway Mall (such as Ontario). It would have been fun to meet Captain Penny at the grand opening, though!

Giant Tiger was sold to Gaylords in 1968. I don't think we shopped there either, although I remember at least one TV commercial for Gaylords that featured Cleveland Indian pitcher Gaylord Perry.

Here is a photo of the former Giant Tiger/Gaylords property on Elyria Avenue today (it's for sale).

Here's an interesting link with some additional information on the former Giant Tiger building on a blog called Dead and Dying retail! If you look along the left side of the blog, there is a listing of Ohio links.

Christmas 1960: Giant Tiger ad

Here's part of an ad for another local gone-but-not-forgotten store: Giant Tiger. (Click on the ad so you can see all the neat stuff.)

At one time, Giant Tiger was a pretty popular department store in Northern Ohio. According to this article, it was eventually sold to Gaylords, another chain.

This ad is interesting not only because of the toys (Three Stooges colorforms, Tinker Toys, toy pianos, etc.) but because of Giant Tiger's advertising mascot. What the heck is Tony the Tiger doing in a Giant Tiger ad?? Someone call Kellogg's!