Monday, March 12, 2018

1963 magazine advertisement for Alaga Syrup


This wholesome advertisement for Alaga Syrup appears in Abe Saperstein's Fabulous Harlem Globetrotters 1963 Yearbook. It's one of the few ads in the magazine that isn't promoting tobacco or liquor. The full-page advertisement touts ways to combine syrup, carbohydrates and meat to bolster your breakfast:

  • Hot waffles with a layer of broiled ham and Alaga
  • Golden brown pancakes and dairy-fresh cottage cheese with Alaga
  • Tasty fried sausage wrapped in buttermilk pancakes with Alaga

(I'll pass on all three of those, thanks. I like to keep things simple. Carbs and syrup, with some butter, is just dandy for me.)

Alaga Syrup, which dubs itself the “Sweetness of the South” has been around for more than 110 years. You can read the whole story on the brand's history page, but here's the short version:
"ALAGA syrup was born out of love, and the 'feeling of family' when a Georgia boy met and married an Alabama girl. ... The company was founded in 1906 as the Alabama-Georgia Syrup Company by Mr. Louis Broughton Whitfield, Sr. ... By this time, Louis had married the love of his life, Willie Vandiver, and it was she who created both the ALAGA name and the logo. She was from Alabama and he was from Georgia, so she combined the abbreviation for Alabama, ALA and the GA for Georgia, and thus ALAGA was born."
Syrup schmoopies! Over the decades, spokespersons for Alaga have included Clark Gable, Willie Mays (see his ads), Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (!), Ernest Hemingway and Bear Bryant.

Today, the company is named Whitfield Foods (though it remains family-owned) and it still strongly ties itself with the Alaga brand. It offers many varieties of syrups and even a hot sauce. A 2014 article by Dawn Kent Azok describes the modern company operations and a bit of its history.

1 comment:

  1. That moment when you see Zelda Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Bear Bryant in the same sentence :)

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