Gray Drug Ad – Sept. 1955

Although Top Value Stamps haven't existed since the company went out of business in the early 1980s, there are plenty of Baby Boomers who remember them. Krogers seems to have been the store that many of us remember as giving them out with purchase. 

Well, Gray Drug Stores did too. The nearly full page above from the Lorain Journal of Sept. 15, 1955 makes the announcement. At that time, there was just the Gray Drug store at the relatively new O'Neil - Sheffield Shopping Center.

Here's a copy of the 1955 catalog shown in the ad (poached from eBay).

What's interesting to me (since I'm a big fan of classic ad mascots) is the image of Toppie the Elephant in the ad. He seemed to debut in the local ads in 1955, so this is an early version of him. He's kind of bulky.

Within a year or so, Toppie would get re-designed to be a little cuter, with a more clearly defined head. Here's a detail from a 1956 ad.

And here's a magazine ad from 1960 with the Toppie design we all remember.

I'll never forget that elephant (so to speak). We had a Top Values Stamp lunch box and thermos with Toppie on it. A few years ago, a set just like ours was selling on an online auction website for $6,000.

Anyway, the page from the Lorain Journal includes an article about a neat arrangement in which students from the M. B Johnson School of Nursing (where a girl I dated in high school got her nursing degree) attended some classes at Oberlin College.

With its closing in 1987, M. B. Johnson School of Nursing joins Gray Drug Stores and Top Value Stamps as local institutions shown on this page of the Journal that aren't around any more.

Gray Drug Christmas Ad – 1960

Friday's post featured a 1954 Gray Drug ad with an offbeat Santa Claus. Here's another Journal ad for the Cleveland-based chain with an unusual St. Nick. This ad ran six years later on Dec. 19, 1960. (Note how the name is now Gray Drug Stores as opposed to Gray's Drug Stores as seen in the earlier ad.)

"Gifts For The Smoker" is the ad theme, so Santa's puffing on his own cheroot. While a similar ad would probably be unthinkable today, it very likely didn't raise too many eyebrows in the 1960s.

It's kind of interesting seeing the different brands of cigars, such as R.G. Dun, Kings Club, Perfectos and Wolf Bros. Crooks. The cigarette brands are interesting too: Old Gold, Viceroy, Winston, Lucky Strike (Don Draper's client on Mad Men), Camels, Belair and Philip Morris.

What, no Salem (Dad's favorite)? 

Dad hardly ever smoked. It was something he started while in the Army during World War II. If you smoked, you got a break – so naturally he took it up as a habit. But as for Dad smoking while I was growing up, it was only done in secret, such as when he took my brothers and me fishing. He wasn't fooling Mom though; the peppermints more or less gave him away. In later years, he probably smoked one cigarette a day, and not even the whole thing. And when he no longer drove, I was his enabler – buying him his Salems. One pack lasted him forever.

But let's get back to the ad.

I had to chuckle at Viceroy being one of the brands listed. I still remember the Wacky Package version: Vicejoy. 

"Vicejoy's got the taste that rots" is the Wacky version of "Viceroy's got the taste that's right."

The rest of the Gray Drug ad comprises various pipe tobacco brands (such as Sir Walter Raleigh), the pipes themselves and various accessories, including pipe racks and humidors.

Grandpa Bumke (my Mom's dad) was a smoker. He smoked pipes, cigars (we ended up with a few of his cool cigar boxes) and cigarettes. He used one of those long cigarette holders like the Pink Panther. 

Grandpa even had an ashtray stand in his living room that we used to fiddle with. (We had to entertain ourselves somehow when we visited.)

I guess it's not surprising that Grandpa was smoking when he sat for this portrait. It's how I remember him. 

But smoking eventually contributed to his early demise at 64. It's odd knowing that I've already outlived him.

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I posted part of this Gray Drug ad before, waaaaay back in 2009.

Gray Drug Christmas Ad – 1954

Remember Gray Drug Stores?

You might not. There weren't very many of them in our area. The first one was located in the O'Neil - Sheffield Center when it opened in 1954. Eventually there was one at Oakwood Shopping Center, and finally, at Midway Mall. In the late 1980s, the chain was sold to Rite Aid (my least favorite drug store).

One thing's for sure: Gray Drug had some offbeat Santa Claus characters in its newspaper ads.

Here's one, from the Lorain Journal of December 13, 1954 – 70 years ago today.

Santa's got those pie-eyes that the early Mickey Mouse had. Speaking of the famous rodent, the Walt Disney Target Set is one of the toys shown in the ad. Since the package graphics are hard to decipher in the ad, at first I thought the Disney characters (specifically Donald Duck) were the target. But a look at a target set currently on eBay shows the beloved characters as merely spectators at target practice. 

A close look at the cartoon menagerie reveals that Mickey brought along his "nephews" of unknown parentage. However, he should be paying more attention to poor Pluto Pup, who is in the line of fire (and in danger of ending up like Old Yeller).

The toy buyer for Gray Drug must have been thinking green, because there's two different frog toys in the ad – Peeper the Frog from Rempel, and Jolly Jumper pull-toy. Both are on eBay right now.

And if you weren't in the mood for froggie fun, there was Mr. Potato Head "in his own li'l house." The famous spud's cardboard domicile is on eBay as well.

Gray Drug & Woolworth Halloween Ads – October 1973

How do you know when you're too old to go trick or treating?

I've mentioned before how I knew when it was my last Halloween. I'd been accompanying my younger brother door to door, and we had covered a lot of turf. After hitting all the houses on Skyline Drive, we had greedily worked our way up Palm Springs Drive near Masson School. There was still a little time left, and we didn't want to waste it.

I still remember the house to this day. The homeowner took a look at me, made up like a hobo with a burnt cork Hanna-Barbara five o'clock shadow. He sneered, "Aren't you a little old to be trick or treating?" I felt like crawling into a hole. 

So by the time Halloween 1973 rolled around, my trick or treating days were over. That's why I don't particularly remember any of the costumes shown in the ad for Gray Drug above, which appeared in the Journal on October 18, 1973.

Here's a closer look.

Several Hanna-Barbara characters are front and center in the ad, including Jane Jetson, Jonny Quest, Jinks the Cat and Dum Dum, the canine sidekick of Touché Turtle. It's odd to see Jinks in there, seeing as he was the 'oldest' HB character in the bunch, with no new Jinks vs meeses cartoons made since the early 1960s.

As for photos of the costumes, the great plaidstallions.com 1970s website corn-veniently posted images of a brochure that includes just about all of them – saving me time trying to scrounge them up one at a time!

As the plaidstallions.com website notes, the 'Speed Bird" is pretty much a ripoff of the Roadrunner, right down to the Beep Beep lettering on the front of the costume!

I did find the Jonny Quest mask online. He looks like he's been gobbing on the lipstick!

Here's another advertisement from Halloween 1973 highlighting costumes. This one's for Woolworth, and it ran in the Journal on October 24, 1973.

It's an odd assortment: generic Halloween characters (a ghost, a devil, a witch); and well-known licensed characters (Fred Flintstone, Batman, Spider-Man and Scooby-Doo). One of the Groovie Goolies is there (Frankie) and there's also comic film actor Charlie Chaplin, an unusual choice since he was in his mid-80s at that point.

And here are the photos of some of the costumes culled mainly from eBay. Somehow these managed to escape the garbage can over the last fifty years.

Here's the generic Woolworth ghost. Casper he ain't.

And here's Fred Flintstone – who looks like he's been clobbered by a club-wielding Bamm Bamm Rubble.

Here's the aforementioned Frankie, one of the Groovie Goolies, a good example of cartoon drac dreck from Filmation Studios.

Here's Scooby-Doo – the ever-popular Hanna-Barbara hound, who was in his original heyday in the early 1970s. Hey, he kind of looks like the much-hated puppy Scrappy-Doo.

Lastly, here's Spider-Man. The off-model illustration of the costume in the ad doesn't exactly make my Spidey sense tingle. But in fairness to the artist, he might have been confused with the nostril holes and mouth slit on the mask.

Gray Drug Ad – July 6, 1972

Gray Drug is largely forgotten today in Lorain County.

According to the Encyclopedia of Cleveland History, the chain was founded in Cleveland in 1912. By the mid-1930s, there were 29 stores in the chain, which was known as Weinberger Drug Stores, Inc. By 1945, the stores acquired the Gray Drug name. The chain was greatly expanded in the late 1960s, swallowed up Cunningham Drug Stores in 1982, and at one point numbered more than 360 stores. 

Gray Drug was sold to Rite Aid Corp. in 1987.

Locally, there just weren't all that many Gray Drug stores. There was one out at the O'Neil - Sheffield Center when it opened in 1954. But at the time of the ad below, which appeared in the Journal back on July 6, 1972, there were only two: one at Midway Mall and one at Oakwood Shopping Center.

It's an odd ad, with its curious "Lucky Buck" theme highlighting an odd assortment of items for a dollar, including playing cards, pencils, cigars, Planters Peanuts, flea and tick spray, Whitman candies, and even a few health and beauty products. 

Hey, there's even some Bowman Ice Cream in there too!

I imagine there's not too many feelings of nostalgia for Gray Drug. Before Gray Drug and the other chains arrived, we all had our family pharmacies that we favored, such as Whalen Drug or National Pharmacy. Ironically, Rite Aid is probably my least favorite drug store.

Today, I prefer Discount Drug Mart – probably because there's one about two minutes from where I live. The staff is friendly and the prices are pretty good.

Gray Drug Halloween Ad – 1971

Fifty years ago this Halloween, Gray Drug was offering a few of the same costumes that were found in the store's 1970 ad. This included Mr. Fantastic (strangely wearing a mask) from the Fantastic Four of Marvel fame, and eye-patched Jonathan Kidd from Fantastic Voyage.

New in the 1971 ad (replacing Spider-Man and Bingo from the Banana Splits) were Heckle and Jeckle (well, at least one of the madcap magpies) and Bugaloo Boy.

The Heckle and Jeckle costume is pretty good, with a nice demented grin. Ideally, however, you would need two kids to be wearing the same costume to properly depict the pair of identical mischievous birds.

As for Bugaloo Boy with his antennae, I’m assuming he was a character on the Sid and Marty Krofft show called The Bugaloos (another show I don’t remember). Unfortunately, only a female version of the species appears to have survived the inevitable trash bin or garage sale.

Anyway, the pumpkin lamp shown in the Gray Drug ad is on eBay right now. Here are a few photos from its listing.

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Here’s the version of the lamp with dancing skeletons that was mentioned in a comment.

Gray Drug Store Halloween Ad – October 1970

Gray Drug is one of those forgotten drug store chains, not unlike Leader Drug Store, Cunningham Drug, etc. Apparently it just wasn’t big enough to survive on its own, and was sold to Rite Aid (my least favorite drug store chain) in 1987, according to its Wikipedia entry.

But fifty years ago, Gray Drug was still around, with a few local outlets, such as the one at O’Neil Sheffield Center. Above is the chain's Halloween-themed ad that ran in the Monday, October 26, 1970 edition of the Journal.

There are a few costumes featured in the ad, but it’s a real grab bag. The ad helpfully identifies some of them, noting, “Be the envy of your crowd as The Spiderman, Banana Splits, Jonathan Kidd (?) or Mr. Fantastic! Be a lovely Fairy or gay Gypsy.”

I don’t know, but I think whoever created the drawing of “The Spiderman” (why the Ohio State-like “the”?) costume either didn’t have a sample photo or had never seen a comic book or TV cartoon featuring Spidey.

My spider sense tells me this is a crummy rendering!

Mr. Fantastic of the Fantastic Four doesn’t look very fantastic either, with the addition of a mask, and missing his iconic greying sides.

At least the mask of Bingo from the Banana Splits is a reasonable facsimile. (Bingo was never my favorite Banana Split. He wasn’t the leader like Fleegle, funny like Drooper or an oddball like Snorky. I rank him as the George Harrison of the team.)

Lastly, like me you’re probably wondering: who is the aforementioned Jonathan Kidd? A descendant of Captain Kidd?

Nope. Apparently he was the eye-patched team commander in the animated cartoon series Fantastic Voyage. The character wasn’t in the movie version starring Raquel Welch (which we saw as a summer movie). Here’s a screen grab from the series.

And here’s the costume.

I guess John Wayne made eye patches cool again in True Grit.