![]() By the 1910s, he found work with the Acme Packing Company (makers of the Red Crown brand of corned beef and sausages), eventually rising to the level of Sales Manager and later Vice President at the firm’s Chicago office. Meyer Katz, the central architect of the Rival brand, was born in Orange, New Jersey, in 1889-the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia. In retrospect, they probably should have renamed the business Katz & Dogs, Inc., but no point crying over spilled meat. This set the stage for the next key development in the Rival story, as Hoffman, Oppenheimer, and a man named Meyer Katz purchased all shares of a revamped Rival Packing Company in 1933 (shortly after the first Rival Dog Food advertisements began appearing in newspapers). When the founder of that business, Jacob Sidney Hoffman, died that same year at just 47 years of age, it left his younger brother Harry I. Illinois Street-another address already affiliated with a major cheese and sausage packing operation, the J. Either way, by 1930, the company’s HQ had moved to 322 W. There is no clear evidence of Rival producing pet food during the 1920s, but it’s possible they were doing so with minimal promotion. Oppenheimer was officially listed as Rival’s president. A year later, 46 year-old meat canning mogul Harry D. White at 1020 West 36th Street-the same headquarters as the well established Oppenheimer Casing Company. was organized in 1923 by William Ruger, Jr., Leo J. But the answer was right there all along-remove the dog food, add a coin slot! With many of these old banks still in circulation several generations later, the colorful campaign of a pet food pioneer lives on. ![]() Never before had a company figured out how to get a can of dog food displayed proudly on its customers’ bedroom nightstands. Not only did the company purchase its own ingredients and hold its pooch food up to nearly bipedal standards, they also never missed a chance to let everybody know about it.Ĭommercial jingles and promotional items-like the mini coin banks in our museum collection-were hallmarks of Rival’s far-reaching brand awareness strategy. To its credit, Rival was a tad more sophisticated from the outset. In the midst of the Great Depression, nobody seemed too concerned about where this mysterious new chow came from, either-even if the answer was “an amalgamation of extraneous slaughterhouse run-off,” as was the case with early Rival rivals like Pard (made by Swift & Co.) and Dash (by Armour & Co.). Variations on the milk bone / dog biscuit had been around for a while, but the notion of giving a mutt a pre-cooked, store-bought, vacuum-sealed meal? That marked a real sea change in the culture-a transition of the dog from “best friend” to family member. When this upstart Chicago firm started widely promoting its canned dog food in 1932, the majority of Americans were still content to just feed their canines table scraps or sic ‘em on jackrabbits. The modern pet food industry is a very different animal-pardon the pun-than it was back in the early days of the Rival Packing Company. That makes it your best dog food buy, Arf Arf! Your Dog’s Eyes Will Shine-Coat Look Fine Gimme Ri-val Dog Food, Woof Woof, Woof Woof! Museum Artifact: Rival Dog Food Coin Banks, 1950s
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