Laundry detergents with towels, dishes, glassware...remember all those "bonuses?"

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bongobro

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With all the talking we do about old-fashioned laundry detergents, anyone remember the detergents that "packed a lot more cleaning power with a lot more towel," to quote the late Allen Ludden in a 1971 Bonus detergent ad?

At various times, my mom got "Golden Wheat" dinnerware from Duz detergent, "Desert Rose" and later "English Rose" towels from Bonus detergent, and I got silverware and glassware from boxes of Duz...

And didn't Dolly Parton once do TV ads for Breeze detergent?
 
she sure did!!!!!

to loosely quote Dolly: "and you kin only git them in boxes of Breeze", speaking of the "deesh" towels offered as a premium.
 
Tide

Had a red ball come in theirs during sometime back in the 60's....IIRC.

And going waaaaaay back....my sister (10 yrs older) said that carnival ware glass was included in some detergents, but I don't recall which ones.
 
Dolly and Breeze

Dolly did tout Breeze detergent. She and Porter may have hawked Duz at one time, but I don't remember. Maybe she moved to Breeze after she and Porter went their separate professional ways......dunno.....
 
Wow...I don't remember ever seeing freebies in detergent boxes, but my mother spoke of little hankies being enclosed (she still has them....)
 
Dolly and Porter did indeed hawk Breeze detergent "Look Porter, towels just like the ones WE use!" The year was 1970-71 when this took place. I remember seeing these commercials on the TV in the TV room in my college dorm.
 
4 Oxy

Oxy:

Premiums, as they were called, used to be a very popular way of attracting customers. Duz stayed with the free towels for years and years. Gas stations used to give away maps and glassware. Grocery stores used to have dishes for next to nothing with a $10 purchase, mostly the ironstone offerings of the Royal China Co. of Sebring, OH. A&P offered so much Royal China that they actually got their own exclusive pattern, "Currier and Ives". There's still a little bit of premium activity, but nothing like there used to be. Those Royal China offers used to be like 29 cents for one piece; I knew people who had services for 24 in patterns like "Blue Heaven" and "Star Glow". I have service for eight in "Star Glow" myself.

You often used to get an incentive to open an account with a bank, like a free toaster if you put in $500 as an initial deposit. And if you'll look in old 1950s and '60s women's magazines, you'll find a wealth of mail-in offers, like getting a Revere Ware butter warmer for 50 cents plus two Land O' Lakes proofs of purchase, or a set of Ekco steak knives for a buck and the label from a bottle of Lea & Perrins Worcestershire sauce.

Now, of course, everyone acts as if they're doing you a favour to take your money.
 
And wasn't it Mobil that gave out drink glasses with your local pro football team logo on them?

And grocery stores that had dinnerware on sale. One week, come in and get the plates, the next week the coffee cups and saucers, the next week serving platters. All with a $10.00 or more purchase.

I know this was mentioned above, but I thought I'd expound on it a little!
 
I remembered in the 70's when my mom openend a new box of Tide shaking the powder detergent off. As a young chap, I couldn't wait to pull out the towel in the next box. My mom claims that the towel took up space in the box leaving less detergent.

At that time Downey also had the automatic fabric softener release ball. You had to order it.
 
The set of china that we have was given away around here as premiums for buying so many $$$ worth of groceries. Cunningham & Pickett of Alliance, OH was a big supplier of premium-type dinnerware. They were primarily the distributor. Our pattern which is Norway Rose, was sitting in my wife's uncle's attic for 30+ years. I also have an old 3 Minute Oats box which shows an "Ivoryware" cup & saucer as being in the box as a freebie.
 
Golden Wheat

My Mother has an entire 8 piece place-setting of the Golden Wheat dishes. Her grandmother helped her collect them back in the 1960's for her hope chest.

Crystal Wedding oats still come with a plastic tumbler.
 
Flour Tokens

Dixieland:

Remember Capitola Money? If you don't, I'll bet your mom or grandma do. Capitola was a flour company, and Capitola Money was tokens that you could save up and redeem for premiums. You could send away for a Capitola catalogue that told you what was available and for how many tokens. It was rather like Green Stamps, but specific only to Capitola products. There were also redeemable coupons on Betty Crocker products (discontinued only last year, I believe), and on Octagon Soap. Never knew what you got with Octagon Soap coupons, but the Betty Crocker ones were redeemable for some pretty decent stainless flatware from Oneida, mainly the "Twin Star" pattern.
 
Nope...

Can't say I am familiar with Capitola. I grew up in the Nashville area and the people there are very brand-loyal (or were moreso back then). The flour of choice was (and still is) Martha White and Gold Medal runs a distant second. Colonial Bread, Tide, Cheer, Wisk, Texaco, Dial Soap and others come to mind. (I could go on but no one would be interested)
 
I forgot to add Raleigh cigarette coupons also. My wife had an avocado GE electric skillet that had detachable legs, and a tilt leg for draining off excess grease and other schmutz. My Mom's cousin's siter-in-law smoked so many packs of Bel-Air cigs that they were able to redeem their coupons for a card table & the matching chairs circa 1977-78. When we cleaned out my M-I-L's house we found a 3lb. coffee can stuffed full of the little buggers. I called Brown & Williams only to find out the program had been discontinued a year earlier, DAMN.
 
"they're no four-dollar Turkish delights, but...&qu

That's why I quoted Allen Ludden in the Bonus commercial in my original post. The towels that came in detergent boxes--even the first Bonus towels--were fairly thin compared to the towels you bought in the store.

In fact, the subject drift line was from another Allen Ludden Bonus TV ad, where even he acknowledged a detergent towel would not be TOL, but, as he added, "they are heavier and thicker than any towel packed in a detergent."

The "Ludden" towels, BTW, were solid-colored towels with a corrugated texture, while the original Bonus towels were rose-patterned.

And Breeze, I recall, had "Fiesta Stripe" towels about 1967 or 1968, about a year before Porter and Dolly began talkin' about them on TV (their commercials were so good that people actually thought they WERE husband and wife even thought hey weren't!
 

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