Is the guy on the Quaker Oats box John Penn?
In regards to SDSTAFF Veg's answer about the Quaker Oats guy. Isn't it John Penn that is pictured on all Quaker Oat products? I think so!SDSTAFF Veg replies:
Sorry, Hawk, I'm afraid John Penn hasn't been immortalized by this particular food product conglomerate. At least according to the conglomerate itself he hasn't, and, frankly, I can't see any reason for them to lie about it.
According to the good folks at Quaker Oats, the Quaker Man was America's first registered trademark for a breakfast cereal, his registration taking place on September 4th, 1877. "The name was chosen when Quaker Mill partner Henry Seymour found an encyclopedia article on Quakers and decided that the qualities described -- integrity, honesty, purity -- provided an appropriate identity for his company's oat product." Now, personally, I've never met an oat that had no integrity or that lied to me, but I guess consumers in the late nineteenth century were a bit more gullible. To drive the "purity" point even further home, the original Quaker Man carried a scroll with the word "pure" written on it.
In 1901, the Quaker Oats company was formed when three cereal mills -- including Seymour's Quaker Mill -- combined. The new entity kept the trademark that Seymour had registered, but it has gone through three revisions since then. In 1946, graphic designer Jim Nash introduced the familiar "smiling head" portrait. Between 1955 and 1958, Chicago artist and illustrator Haddon Sundblom updated Nash's line drawing to a full color portrait of the Quaker Man. And in 1970, Saul Bass created the distinctive one-color "shadow" image that you see on packages today (it was adopted as the package trademark in 1972).
So, Hawk, if the Quaker Man looks like John Penn, it's either a coincidental resemblance, or there's a conspiracy at the Quaker Oats Company to keep the identity of the model secret, presumably because he gained a bit of noteriety elsewhere. Think what you like, I'll go for the coincidence theory myself.
