Tag Archives: national identity

During the 1920s, Jell-O advertising in North America focused on both the product’s convenience (the fact that it could be consumed almost anywhere) and its connection with idealized domestic settings. Both themes were central to a 1922 “at home everywhere” advertising campaign in the United States and Canada. Booklets distributed in both countries featured images of people serving or consuming Jell-O in a series of disparate settings: camping in the woods, on a farm in the “wheat belt,” and in a snow-bound cabin. Indeed, both the American and Canadian versions of the booklet featured a bear and a cabin on the cover. But the Canadian and American booklets differed on one key point. The American booklet included a plantation in its compilation of idealized Jell-O consuming locations and featured an illustration of an African-American boy serving the dessert to a white woman at the “Big House.” The Canadian version did not. When it came to promoting their product in Canada, Jell-O’s advertisers recognized that while some cultural allusions were transferable, others were not. Jell-O could be both Canada’s and America’s “most famous” dessert but the reference points used to justify such claims required selectivity and political awareness.