Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 14, 1993 TAG: 9306140210
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHICAGO LENGTH: Medium
Cracker Jack is nothing without the sweet anticipation millions of people have felt as they tore into a box of the glazed popcorn and peanuts, hoping the prize hidden inside would be "a good one."
It's been around for 100 years and a centennial celebration is set to begin Wednesday at - where else? - a baseball game at Chicago's Wrigley Field.
More than 17 billion prizes have gone into the boxes through the years, such as whistles, games, spin-tops, yo-yos, brooches, joke books, instant tattoos and miniature pinball games.
F.W. Rueckheim introduced his treat of peanuts, popcorn and molasses at the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. It was a hit but had no name.
The name didn't appear until several years later, after a salesman tasted the confection and exclaimed: "That's a cracker jack!" which was slang for "fantastic."
Sailor Jack, modeled after Rueckheim's grandson, and his faithful dog, "Bingo," didn't appear on boxes until 1918.
But it was the prizes, introduced in 1912, and Cracker Jack's relationship with baseball that cemented the snack's place in history.
The prizes, all made in the United States, are collectors' items. They reflect a changing America, said Alex Jaramillo Jr., a collector from Fontana, Calif., who wrote a book on the Cracker Jack prizes.
"In the '50s, the prizes reflected that era by being baseball cards, TV stuff, cowboy stuff," he said. "In the '60s, there was flower-child items. In the 1940s, you'd have the World War II-type prizes - soldiers, airplane spotter cards and things like that."
In 1908, composer Albert Von Tilzer and lyricist Jack Norworth wrote "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," which forever tied the snack to baseball with the line, "Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack." Three-quarters of the nation's major-league and minor-league ballparks sell the snack.
In the 1930s, the company was deluged with complaints about a toy-sailor prize with a pipe designed by artist C. Carey Cloud because many consumers saw a resemblance between the sailor and Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
by CNB