Black Bart and Faygo

At my age, I have a lot in common with Herkimer the bottle blower for Uptown. Remember him? “Too pooped to participate,” until his boss filled him with Uptown pop. “Live it up, up, up with Uptown!”

Can’t say I ever recall drinking Uptown (Faygo) lemon-lime, but we all knew and drank Faygo pop. (Sorry, any non-Michiganders, soda is what we put in cookies to make them rise.) Red pop, root beer, and my favorite Faygo, Rock & Rye, over ice or with ice cream for floats.

Ice cream? Floats? One pop was as effective for colds and flu as it was delectable. None other than Vernor’s, “deliciously different.” You cough when you raise the glass to your mouth. It has a fizz and taste unlike any other. Detroit’s speciality and the oldest (continually) produced pop in America. Boston cooler? Hot Vernor’s? I still look for it when someone’s sick or when I want zip.

Local commericals in my childhood had more of an impact and were more memorable than any I can think of now, other than Publix supermarket Christmas ads.

Black Bart and his horse. “Which way did he go? Which way did he go?” “He went for FAY-GO!” I was so enamored by the talking horse, I hardly remember the Faygo Kid, and after Black Bart shot holes in him, he couldn’t enjoy his rescued Faygo root beer.

“You’ve got an uncle in the furniture business, Joshua Doore, Joshua Doore,” a clever jingle that gave no hint of mob activity. Years later, I was stunned to hear the same jingle with “Robinson Furniture” tacked on. That wasn’t right.

A better known face and voice was Mr. Belvedere (TY-8-7100), “We do good work.” Born Maurice Lezell in 1921, Mr. Belvedere sold aluminum screens and storm windows, and in 1948 started Belvedere Construction. (The name came from Clifton Webb’s Belvedere films.) He went door-to-door to radio to TV, which is what I remember.

We Russell kids ate a mountain of cereal in those years, especially during Saturday morning cartoons. TV was a big deal. Dad bought a color television in the early 60’s, although many of our favorite shows and commercials were still black-and-white.

We watched programs in the evenings, too (except for the occasional after-school appearance of my hero, Soupy Sales and his sidekick Pookie). Remember when the shows were once a week, with commercials, and if you missed it, too bad for you?

The Flintstones. Huckleberry Hound (“…and her shoes are number ni-eeeen!”). Wonderful World of Disney. Popeye. Superman. Dragnet. Twilight Zone. And commercials that can whisk me back to childhood at the first sound.

“Coco Wheats, Coco Wheats can’t be beat…”
“They’re GR-E-A-T!” Kellogg’s Tony the Tiger (with the voice of Thurl Ravenscroft, who also sang “You’re a mean one, Mister Grinch.”)

I still pull up the Detroit Zoo commercial from the 80’s on YouTube to watch the animals prepare for guests. “My lines, my lines!” “Makeup, makeup!” “I want to talk to my agent”…”Let ME talk to your agent.”

I came across a picture of the Faygo Kid and Black Bart the other day, which triggered this rush of memories that I wanted to share with you.

My brother and I could sing all the jingles, including the Little Lulu theme song and Felix the Cat. We must have depleted Mom’s cereal supply every Saturday morning, although we all ate hot cereal on cold school mornings…Coco Wheats, Cream of Wheat, Cream of Rice, Ralston Purina, and of course, oatmeal with maple syrup, brown sugar, and milk. For me, grits are a hot cereal for sugar and milk, a statement which freezes my current Florida neighbors into shocked horror.

We were excited when Pebbles Flintstone was born.

We ate Stroh’s ice cream and tasted Stroh’s beer.

We played cowboys and Indians, or king and quests, or wore blankets for a Superman cape.
“Faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive. Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound. Look! Up in the sky. It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Superman!” (Superman was sponsored by Kellogg’s and I don’t remember one advertisement during the show.)

But there’s one particular commercial (sung by the Gaylords) that everybody recognized and sang, from younger than me to beyond my parents’ age. You know. You sang it, too, and probably still can:

“Stay on the right track to Nine Mile and Mack,
Roy O’Brien trucks and cars, make your money back!
Roy O’Brien’s got them buyin, buyin’,
they come from many miles away!
You’ll save yourself a lot of dollars, dollars,
by driving out his way today!
So stay on the right track to Nine Mile and Mack,
to get the best deal in town,
‘cause Roy O’Brien’s the best deal around!”

Zips me back decades in two seconds!