jeffquitney
patreon
Scudder's Potato Chip TV Commercial ~ 1962 Laura Scudder Potato Chip Factory
🕑 Added 2019-10-08 22:37:34 +0000 UTCmore at http://quickfound.net/
Originally a public domain film from the Library of Congress Prelinger Archives, slightly cropped to remove uneven edges, with the aspect ratio corrected, and one-pass brightness-contrast-color correction & mild video noise reduction applied.
The soundtrack was also processed with volume normalization, noise reduction, clipping reduction, and/or equalization (the resulting sound, though not perfect, is far less noisy than the original).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laura_Scudder
Wikipedia license: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/
Laura Clough Scudder (July 19, 1881 – March 13, 1959) was an entrepreneur in Monterey Park, California, who made and sold potato chips and who pioneered the packaging of potato chips in sealed bags to extend freshness...
Biography
Born in 1881, in Philadelphia, as Laura Clough, she was a nursing student in Trenton, N.J., then worked as a nurse, before moving to Ukiah, in Northern California, having married Charles Scudder on July 4, 1908. She opened a restaurant across from the Mendocino County Courthouse...
Laura... branched out into the potato chips in 1926 and later, peanut butter in 1931. The Scudders lived in La Habra Heights Laura Scudder tended a victory garden and wrote a newspaper column.
Potato chips
In the early days, potato chips were distributed in bulk from barrels or glass display cases, or tins, which left chips at the bottom stale and crumbled. Laura Scudder started paying her workers to take home sheets of wax paper and iron them into the form of bags, which were filled with chips at her factory the next day. This innovation kept the chips fresh and crisp longer and, along with the invention of cellophane, allowed potato chips to become a mass market product. Other potato chip makers soon began to package their chips in bags.
Scudder also began putting dates on the bags, becoming the first company to freshness date its food products and sold in twin packs to further reduce staleness and crumbling. This new standard of freshness was reflected in the marketing slogan: "Laura Scudder's Potato Chips, the Noisiest Chips in the World." The Laura Scudder Potato Chip Factory was at Garvey Avenue east of Atlantic Boulevard, Monterey Park in the 1920s...
At one point, Laura Scudder turned down a $9 million offer for the company because the buyer wouldn't guarantee her employees' jobs. In 1957, she sold her firm to Signal Oil & Gas of Signal Hill, with a $6 million offer from a buyer who guaranteed job security for her workforce. The new company was called Laura Scudder Inc. At the time of the sale, the company had expanded into mayonnaise, and Laura Scudder brand potato chips held a greater than 50% share of the Californian market. She continued to run the company until her death in 1959...
In 1987, Laura Scudder Inc. was sold to Borden, Inc. for $100 million. Annual sales for the chipmaker were $126 million in 1986. Union difficulties motivated Borden to close all California plants of Laura Scudder only a year later. Borden's overall culture of mismanagement, incurrence of excessive debt to finance numerous acquisitions, and several restructurings in 1993, led Borden to sell what remained of Laura Scudder for less than $16.7 million. The buyer, G.F. Industries, Inc.'s Granny Goose subsidiary was already in trouble, and was put up for sale in January 1995. In 2009, Snack Alliance, Inc. licensed from The Laura Scudder's Company, LLC the rights to produce and market potato chips under the Laura Scudder's brand. According to the J.M. Smucker Company website,[40] the Laura Scudder's Natural Peanut Butter business was acquired by Smucker's from BAMA Foods Inc. in December 1994. As of 2009, Smucker's marketed the Laura Scudder's brand of natural peanut butter on the west coast. According to a March 31, 2010 announcement, Snack Alliance, Inc. was acquired by Shearers Foods Inc., a manufacturer of competing salty snacks in different regions of North America. At the same time (2010) it appears the original Laura Scudder's brand is being actively marketed by a Californian company. These two companies have different packaging for their different Laura Scudder's products, and the Californian company appears to be marketing its products nationwide.
