M AY / J U N E 2 0 1 5
Product Placement
SpaghettiOs
by Charles Sebastian, Staff Writer
One cannot help but be fascinated by how food shapes our
culture and thinking. SpaghettiOs, the canned spaghetti many
of us remember from childhood
(even if we didn’t eat it), stays in
our minds as a staple of American
cabinet food. Like so many original, well-known brands, SpaghettiOs have branched out today in
many varieties and flavors, some
with franks, some with meatballs,
some with ravioli.
The Campbell Soup Company
is behind this bit of marketing
genius, starting the SpaghettiOs
brand in 1965 after much research
on a “less messy” type of spaghetti
for parents. The idea sold like hot
cakes with no test marketing, only
the memorable jingle, “Oh-oh,
SpaghettiOs!” Also, the idea that
SpaghettiOs was
“the neat round
spaghetti you
can eat with a
spoon” – making it easier
for kids to eat
on their own
(and perhaps
less dangerous than
a fork)
– went a
long way.
What
many
people don’t
realize about the Campbell
Soup Company is that there are
other, smaller pieces that make up
the larger Campbell name. The
Franco-American Food Company
is one such entity. Started in 1886
in Camden, N.J., by Alphonse
31
Biardot and his sons, the company
did well through the turn of the
century, until it was
bought
out by
Campbell in
1915.
It was
under this
banner that
Campbell
raised the
SpaghettiOs
flag in 1965.
SpaghettiOs,
like so many
products in the
Campbell Soup
line, have come
under fire over
the past 10 years
because of excessive salt. This caused
the company to begin to include
“heart healthy” varieties. These
apparently did not sell as well as
the company hoped.
SpaghettiOs also had some
negative press in 2010 when
Campbell’s posted a “take time to
remember” message on its Twitter
account, laid over the backdrop of
a picture of the bombing of Pearl
Harbor. There was some public
pushback and the post was soon
removed, but not before some
parody and satire flooded the
Internet.
On an even more irony-laden
note, a woman in Georgia was
arrested last year for possession
of a spoon with a “suspicious
substance” on it, found after cops
pulled her over for a minor offense. After spending a month in
jail, the crime lab reported back
that the spoon was covered in
dried SpaghettiOs sauce. Legal
action is (understandably) being
pursued.
One cannot help
but be fascinated
by how food
shapes our culture
and thinking.
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