Avon Lake Food Center Ad – Jan. 7, 1954

From seventy years ago, here's a nice nearly full-page ad for the Avon Lake Food Center, which was located in the shopping center on Lake Road. As you can see, our old pal Sparky – mascot of the Sparkle Markets grocery store chain – makes an appearance in the ad, albeit without his name on his hat. Perhaps that's because the Food Center wouldn't officially become part of the Sparkle Family until January 1957 (which I wrote about here).

The ad ran in the Lorain Journal on January 7, 1954.

Note the location of the store is given as 'Stop 65,' the old interurban designation that lives on today there. Surprisingly, the items for sale in the ad are simply staples of everyone's pantry and fridge: sugar, catsup, butter, etc. Perhaps that was just to get you in the store, where you might be buffaloed into buying some of the 'choice cuts of Ohio Steer Beef.'

But what's really interesting in the ad is the free Royal Scot Plaid dinnerware offered as a part of a cash register receipt redemption program. I tried unsuccessfully to find some on eBay. Maybe there's still a lot of it being used in Avon Lake to this day.

But the ad got me to remembering when grocery stores offered all sorts of incentives to shop there regularly. I know Mom bought a whole set of Funk & Wagnall's New Deluxe Encyclopedias (buying a book a week) at A&P around 1966. We used those things for years. And I remember trying to put together a set of dishes from the Avon Lake IGA back in the 1980s.

These Funk & Wagnall's Encyclopedias should look familiar
to many of you if your mom shopped at A&P in the 1960s

Cleveland Indians Players at Jay's Sparkle Market – July 1962

If you've ever read the baseball classic Ball Four by pitcher Jim Bouton, then you might remember how some of his teammates were annoyed at having to make appearances to sign autographs or show up at some event. The players weren't paid very much (sometimes as little as $25) and these types of events usually took place on their day off.

I was thinking about that when I saw the above ad for Jay's Sparkle Market in Lorain, which was promoting the special appearance of two Cleveland Indians at the store, as well as at the Little League Park on Washington Ave. that day. The full-page ad appeared in the Journal on July 2, 1962.

Ironically, one of the Indians was Gary "Ding Dong" Bell, who a few seasons later would be one of Jim Bouton's roommates when both were members of the Seattle Pilots. Gary Bell is quite prominent in Ball Four, and the subject of many hilarious anecdotes. It's also quite poignant in the book when Bell finds out he's been traded to the Chicago White Sox. Bouton wrote, "He sat on the edge of the bed and I could see the thoughts racing through his mind. How do I move? What do I do with my car? Who's on that club? Any friends? It's like, I suppose, when you're wounded. You don't know where you've been hit and you have to sit there a minute and feel around to find out just how seriously you've been hurt."

The other member of the Tribe who was scheduled to come to Lorain that day was Jerry Kindall, who was with the Indians from 1962 - 1964. His Wikipedia entry notes, "Kindall quickly felt at home in Cleveland, where he became the everyday second baseman, a position he held for all of 1962. Through May 11, he was batting .289. Sportswriter Joe Reichler called him "a defensive whiz" in May 1962, observing that he had "steadied the infield" for Cleveland. 

"The greatest offensive moment of his career came that June, when Kindall had eight hits in a four-game series against the New York Yankees. He had four hits on June 16, including a two-run walk-off home run against Jim Coates in the bottom of the ninth inning that turned a 9–8 deficit into a 10–9 victory. The next day, his two-run home run against Bill Stafford in the first game of a doubleheader put Cleveland up 2–0 in an eventual 6–1 victory. The series victory pushed Cleveland past New York into the American League (AL) lead, though they would eventually finish the season in sixth place."

Sparkle Market Turkey Ad – November 1960

It’s been a while since I featured a vintage Sparkle grocery store ad with Sparky, the ever-happy, freckled advertising mascot, so here’s a Thanksgiving-themed one. It ran in the Lorain Journal on November 16, 1960.

“Lifer’s finest Fresh Frozen Young Tom Turkeys” are the big item on the full-page ad. 

Lifer Turkey Farm was owned by Dwight & Florence Lifer, and was located in Knox County, Ohio near Danville. The turkey farm apparently was well-known enough to be the subject of a 1947 episode of an Ohio Bell-sponsored radio series on WTAM called “The Ohio Story.” (To read the radio script, click here.)

The per-pound turkey pricing in the Sparkle ad varied by size. Turkeys weighing twenty pounds and up were only 39 cents a pound; small turkeys weighing only six pounds (that’s a Tweety Bird) and up were 49 cents.

I don’t remember mom ever fixing a turkey for the Brady Thanksgiving dinner when I was a kid. For years, she fixed two birds – a duck and a capon. She remembers that it was a lot of work.

Amherst Sparkle Market Opens – January 1969

From a 1957 ad

Here's a nice reminder of the days when Sparkle Markets had a strong presence in Northeast Ohio, and all of our mothers shopped there at some time or another. It’s the ad announcing the opening of the Amherst Sparkle Market, located near the intersection of Leavitt Road and Middle Ridge Road.

The ad ran in the Lorain Journal on January 15, 1969.

Note the ad even features good old Sparky, the grocery chain’s freckle-faced mascot. Sparky’s been featured on this blog many times.

In the Amherst ad, he looks like he’s finally grown up and become a “suit," (as opposed to his boyish appearance at right, whereas he looks more like a lowly stock boy).

Anyway, the Amherst store (according to an online source) lasted until the mid-1990s. It’s too bad that the chain is gone from Lorain County, as we could always use more choices when it comes to grocery shopping. (The Grafton Sparkle Market is not part of the official Sparkle chain.)

Today, however, the Sparkle chain survives. It continues to operate 19 Sparkle Markets across Ohio, Pennsylvania and West Virginia.

Sparky’s still around as well on the Sparkle website, promoting Sparky’s e-Deals.

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Longtime blog contributor and researcher extraordinaire Dennis Thompson sent me this photo (below) of the Amherst Sparkle Market as it looked in 1963 when it was still part of the Food Fair chain. That's Leavitt Road in the foreground, with Middle Ridge on the left (coming from the east).

Dennis has contributed immensely to the VintageAerial website by identifying and posting the information for a countless number of previously unidentified Lorain County photos.

And since we now know what the Sparkle looked like before it was Sparkle, here's a Google Maps shot of the former grocery building in its most recent use as the home of On the Edge Honda.

Jay's New Sparkle Market Grand Opening – May 1962

Over the years, I’ve written a lot about how Oberlin Avenue’s commercial strip slowly evolved on Lorain’s West Side, beginning in the early 1950s, thanks to business pioneers like Frank “Jay” Jursinski.

Back on this post, I featured the March 1952 Grand Opening of Jay's IGA Foodliner.

Originally the store was all by its lonesome self on the southwest corner of Oberlin Avenue and Meister Road (right where Whalen Drugs would later be located in the same building).

Slowly, a small shopping center grew around Jay’s with the addition of an early version of Willow Hardware. By April 1955, Jay moved his grocery store – now called Jay’s Food Center – within the growing shopping center to a larger space.

And by 1962, it was time for Jay to move his popular store to a larger space and change its brand affiliation again.

Jay built a beautiful new store for his business, now called Jay’s Sparkle Market, near 38th Street and Oberlin Avenue.

From the April 29, 1962 Lorain Journal

And here’s the Grand Opening ad for the new store, which ran in the Lorain Journal on May 3, 1962.

Jay was ahead of his time with many innovative ideas that would be right at home in today’s supermarkets: a deli department with home cooked foods and salads all prepared and ready to take home; a sea food section with fresh fish; home made pies and donuts made in-house; imported wines and beers; a gourmet food section. All available in Jay’s air-conditioned store with a U. S. Postal Sub Station right next door as part of the complex.

I’m not sure what happened, but by May 1964, Jay’s Sparkle had become part of the growing Meyer Goldberg grocery empire, which longtime Lorainites still remember today.

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I’ve written a lot about Jay’s, including its changeover from Food Center to Sparkle, as well as when Aunt Jemima dropped by.

Sparky's Coming to Food Center – January 1957

I’ve done several posts about the Lorain grocery store operated by Frank “Jay” Jursinski on Oberlin Avenue at Meister Road. It was an early tenant of the shopping center there that later included Willow Hardware.

Jay’s opened in March 1952 and was affiliated with several different national grocery store chain over the years. It was an I.G.A. Food Liner in March 1953, and by March 1955 was a Food Center.

Back here, I posted a March 10, 1955 ad (below) that ran in the Lorain Journal featuring a nameless grocer mascot that looked an awful lot like good old Sparky of the Sparkle Market chain.

At the end of April 1955, the store celebrated a Grand Opening in a larger space in the shopping strip.

But it wasn’t until late January 1957 that the Food Center officially became a Sparkle Market.

In the weeks leading up to the change, a series of full-page ads announcing prizes, gifts and great deals drummed up interest. This ad (below) ran on January 16, 1957.

A week later, this ad ran on January 23, 1957. It features the now-familiar rendering of Sparky.

Finally, on January 30, the big announcement of the opening celebration as Food Centers officially changed their name to Sparkle.

From then on, Sparky made regular appearances in the ads, such as this one (below) on March 20, 1957.

Here are some more great Sparky illustrations from 1957.

From a February 6, 1957 ad

From a June 19, 1957 ad

From a July 1957 ad

Jay later moved his Sparkle store further south on Oberlin Avenue to a brand new building that would become the home of Meyer Goldberg’s.

March 10, 1955 Food Center Ad Starring… Sparky?

Here's something kind of interesting for all you advertising buffs.

Sparky (from a 1958 ad)

It's an ad for Jay's Food Center that appeared in the Lorain Journal on March 10, 1955 – 60 years ago tomorrow. It features a meat cleaver-wielding grocer mascot that bears a strong resemblance to Sparky, the mascot of the Sparkle Market chain (shown at left).

The Sparkle Markets chain was organized in 1955. According to the company website, the chain was born when four independent grocers banded together and joined a group of Akron-area independent grocers. Together, they formed the Sparkle Market group and thus were better positioned to compete with the national chains.

Jay's Food Center did become Jay's Sparkle Market by 1957.

Could the freckled cartoon mascot in the ad be the forerunner of Sparky? Perhaps it was indeed an early Sparky with his name scrubbed off his cap so that the Sparkle ad template could be used by grocery stores that had joined the buying group but hadn't officially adopted the Sparkle name yet.

Sparkle Reveal

I did a double-take driving by the Lorain Metropolitan Housing Authority complex (above) at 1600 Kansas Avenue today. Apparently, some work being done to the outside of the building revealed its previous use as a Sparkle grocery store back in the 1980's.

The building first showed up in the City Directory in 1960 as an A&P. It continued as an A&P up until around 1979 or 1980 when it became a Sparkle.

Around the late 1980's, it became the Harbor IGA (which I shopped at). Unfortunately, it didn't last long, and was closed in the early 1990's.

Nevertheless, it was interesting yesterday to see a reminder of Sparkle's heyday in the Lorain area. Sparky the mascot would certainly approve!

Sparky, the Sparkle Mascot (shown here in a 1958 Journal ad)