Uh-Oh, 51 Years of SpaghettiOs


SpaghettiOs
A closeup of SpaghettiOs.

On this date in 1965, SpaghettiOs were introduced.

Here are some things you may not have known about the convenience food and other similar products.

For those that don’t know, SpaghettiOs is a brand of canned pasta in a tomato sauce. The pasta is circular, hence the Os in the name.

They were created by Donald Goerke of Campbell’s Soup in 1965, as an attempt to make a tidier pasta for kids to eat. The company spent a year studying which shape should be used. Rejected shapes included cowboys and Indians, spacemen, stars and sports shapes.

Goerke also created Campbell’s Chunky Soup, but he was best known by his nickname: The Daddy-O of SpaghettiOs.

At the time, Goerke was the marketing manager for Campbell’s subsidiary Franco-American. Franco-American was founded in 1886 by a French immigrant making foods from his native country. It was purchased by Campbell’s in 1915 and phased out in 2009. All SpaghettiOs products now carry the Campbell’s brand.

The original product was simply pasta rings in sauce. Later additions included meatballs and sliced hot dogs. Types of pasta now available include alphabet, Disney characters and Star Wars characters. They also come in varieties with added calcium. There are also varieties called Beefy TacOs, CheeseburgerOs and Cheesy PizzaOs and a round ravioli called Raviolios.

Our question, which of the following is not a Campbell’s brand in the United States? Bolthouse Farms, Pepperidge Farm, Chef Boyardee or V8?

It’s unofficially National Sea Monkey Day, World Baking Day and National Piercing Day.

It’s the birthday of actor Henry Fonda, who was born in 1905, entertainer Liberace, who was born in 1919 and actor Pierce Brosnan, who is 63 today.

Because we featured 1965 in an episode last week, we’ll spin the wheel to pick a year at random.

This week in 1969, the top song in the U.S. was “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” by The 5th Dimension.

The No. 1 movie was “If It’s Tuesday, It Must Be Belgium,” while the novel “Portnoy’s Complaint” by Philip Roth topped the New York Times Bestsellers list.

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Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_16

http://on-this-day.com/onthisday/thedays/alldays/may16.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaghettiOs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Goerke

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campbell_Soup_Company

https://www.campbells.com/our-brands/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franco-American_(brand)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chef_Boyardee

https://www.checkiday.com/05/16/2016

http://www.biography.com/people/groups/born-on-may-16

http://www.billboard.com/archive/charts/1969/hot-100

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_1969_box_office_number-one_films_in_the_United_States

http://www.hawes.com/1969/1969-05-11.pdf


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