Adventures in vintage advertising: Green Giant Vegetables

Perhaps I was the odd child out, for there was nary a vegetable that I wasn’t a fan of while growing up. While my young relatives and peers found creative ways to mask carrots in crumpled napkins, slip beets to the dog, or feign being too full to possibly consume another bite of squash, I was tucking to my plate of broccoli with almost as much excitement as had it been chocolate cake.

While few things match the culinary experience of freshly harvested veggies, the advent of modern food preservation methods over the past two centuries has helped to ensure that good quality, nutrient rich vegetables are available all year long.

One of the best known and most widely available brands of canned and frozen vegetables is Green Giant, who are perhaps as famous for their hulking verdant mascot the Jolly Green Giant, as they are for the vast assortment of vegetables they package and sell to consumers the world over.

Whenever I buy an item from a brand I know has existed for numerous decades, I find myself joyful over the thought that I’m purchasing something that my grandparents and perhaps even great-grandparents also stocked their home with. I love this sense of a living connection to the past through items that are available to the modern shopper. When picking up a tin of Green Giant sweet peas, I can easily image some distant, beautifully dressed relative from the 1940s doing exactly the same thing on her weekly grocery shopping trip. Such thoughts are entirely nostalgic, I know, but I am of the nostalgic ilk after all.

Green Giant is currently owned by food conglomerate General Mills, but when this brand started out in 1903 it was known as the “Minnesota Valley Canning Company” and specialized in sweet corn. During the 1920s the name Green Giant was introduced to help promote green peas, and by the 50s the brand as a whole had taken on this moniker.

Instantly recognizable as one of North America’s most well known advertising mascots, the Jolly Green Giant appeared on the scene in 1928 (he was named after a variety of large peas called Green Giant). In 1953 this friendly, emerald hued fellow (who, while not the most talkative chap around, is famed for his cheerful “Ho, ho, ho” slogan) made his TV commercial debut and has since stared in a bushel of commercials over the decades, not to mention cardboard standees and vinyl banners in grocery stores, as well as remaining a staple in Green Giant print ads.

In the 1970s the JGG was given a sidekick in the form of a smaller, younger – and rather adorable – green giant named Sprout.

Today Green Giant produces a wide range of vegetable (and fruit) products, from classic canned veggies to frozen side dishes such as mixed vegetable medleys and “steam in the bag” varieties like broccoli with cheese sauce and cut green beans, as well as fresh produce like asparagus, mushrooms, potatoes and kiwi fruit.

In this post however, we’re going to peer back at the older days of Green Giant through some of the companies ads from the mid-twentieth century. Whether you’re a niblet fan or a lover of green peas, there’s sure to be an advertisement below that brings back fond memories or makes you think of the Green Giant commercials and ads that you’ve seen throughout your life.



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{The iconic Jolly Green Giant holds up an equally mammoth ear of corn as rays of sunlight shine around him in this serene and beautiful 1939 advert.}



{This cute ad for peas from 1957 has a sweet hand-drawn quality to it and features a Jolly Green cupid character who strikes me as being something of a precursor for Sprout. Image from Adclassix.com.}



{An elegantly dressed family sits down to dinner with the Jolly Green Giant – who sports a black bow tie – in this 1953 ad, which showedcased the brand’s range of products at the time.}



{This 1950s ad promotes the fact that each can contained two pounds of fresh-picked peas, which makes me think that it was a larger sized can that the ones on shelves today – at least in my neck of the woods.}



{It’s “summer in a can” according to this wonderfully Normal Rockwell-esque example of a tinned corn ad from 1947.}



{The Jolly Green Giant flashed his pearly whites while totting a hefty sized pea pod in this 1955 ad for sweet peas which ran in Family Circle magazine.}



{Famed TV and radio personality (and fellow Canadian!) Art Linkletter lent his image to this 1951 ad for creamed golden sweet corn and Mexican Niblets (corn with diced red and green peppers).}



{A lovely wreath of pods encircle a tin of peas in this festive holiday themed ad from 1951.}



{A sharply dressed young mother watches over two baby carriages, one containing a can of creamed corn, in this charming 1952 ad.}



{This adorable double page ad for sweet peas invited shoppers to send in $2.50 along with proof of purchase if they wanted to take home a darling “Country Girl” doll clad in an outfit featuring an apron with the Jolly Green Giant splashed across it. I’d imagine that this doll is now quite a collectors item.}

{All images above, except for the one example which was denoted otherwise, are from Flickr. To learn more about a specific image, please click on it to be taken to its respective page.}


For even more fantastic vintage Green Giant, be sure to swing by the Gallery of Graphic Design to the collection featured there.

The Green Giant brand is ensconced in both the past and present history of store bought vegetables and canned goods. Their products are tasty, reliable, and as the company’s classic 1930s slogan chimed, they’re “Picked at the fleeting moment of perfect flavour”, making these veggies the perfect year-round staples to have on hand.

Do you have a favourite – past or present – Green Giant product? I for one have always been a big fan of their creamed corn. I know how to make this dish from scratch and often do, but there is still something comforting and wonderful about opening up a tin and eating it by the spoonful (call me odd, but I like really like room temperature or cold cream corn, especially alongside other piping hot foods).

What do memories of Green Giant products, ads, and the friendly mascot duo of the Jolly Green Giant and Sprout, bring to mind for you?