question for Canadians: Rose Rose tea

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Thanks for the offer, mickeyd. Someone earlier posted that Safeway sells it. We no longer have local Safeways here, but Safeway owns VONS markets and they're all over the place here. One finds Safeway-branded products on the VONS shelves here.

I'd hate for you to go to the trouble of buying and mailing the tea, so why don't I check out VONS first, and take a rain check on your very kind offer. It's possible it's been sitting there all this time on the shelves and I just never noticed it. It's a fond memory from college and grad school, but I never actively looked for it here in California.

I have a discount source for Twinings teas, in my area it's Big Lots and they always seem to have 20-bag boxes in several flavors (often flavored black teas, e.g. "Four Summer Fruits" which has four berry flavors) for $1.80. The other day I saw some cranberry-flavored green tea and snapped up four boxes.
 
According to tgheir web site, my local non-WallyWorld grocery store is supposed to carry the brand, but only the black tea, not even decaf. So, I may not opt for it since I mostly drink decaf and herbal teas.
 
"I tried Folger's Coffee Crystals in my room freshman year. Not very good."

I never had Folgers of that era. But I do remember Folgers instant later on (late 80s to mid 90s, which was the last time I think I ever had the stuff). That era was not very good, either.

Although, to be fair, no instant I've had (not that I have had much experience) is as good as what I can make using standard coffee. Then, again, the best among instant coffees is probably better than the worst conventional coffee.

What interests me with Folgers, though, are those ads, like the one I linked to on YouTube. The contrast between the reality (what instant is really like) and image they presented (good enough to be served in fine restaurants).
 
Mrs. Olsen always said, "oh, it's mountain grown - the best kind!" I loved her, and Josephine the Plumber (Comet cleanser), Cora the storeowner (Maxwell House) and Mother Nature (Chiffon margarine)...it's not nice to fool Mother Nature - cue lightning crash - If you think it's butter but it's not, it's Chiffon!

What wonderful commercial characters we had in the 70's!
 
Mrs. Olson, portrayed by actress Virginia Christine, debuted back in 1963 and survived into the 80s. I recall seeing a news article about Virginia which said she was (at that time) tv's longest running commerical spokesperson, over twenty years and counting. She died in 1996. She was married to the German-born character actor Fritz Feld. Virginia was a native of Iowa, her grandparents were Swedish immigrants, she did speak some Swedish herself, but the accent was faked. Her natural speaking voice has perhaps a touch of an Upper Midwest accent, but doesn't sound foreign. I'll concede that she must have grown up surrounded by many foreign-born Scandinavians, so certainly she knew how they sounded speaking English.

Virginia had a notable supporting role in "Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?" as Hillary St. George, the snooty manager of Katherine Hepburn's art gallery, who voices her disapproval of Hepburn's daughter's proposed interracial marriage. A People magazine article I saw about her (late 70s) said that she had helped adapt the script of the ads by incorporating minor grammatical errors she had heard family and friends make in her small town in Iowa. Thus, Folger's was "blended special" instead of "specially blended" or "blended specially" (adjective was used in place of an adverb).

By the way, Folger's was not marketed nationally until the mid or late 1970s. Before that, the San Francisco-headquartered company sold its product primarily in the Western USA. I have a friend who was an exchange student from Sweden in our community (1974) for whom Mrs. Olson was an object of unintended humor (friends would sometimes mimic her accent when speaking to him, etc.). His older sister had spent a year in Ohio two years earlier and knew nothing about Mrs. Olson. Johnny Carson used to incorporate Mrs. Olson jokes into his comedy routine and part of the country (the East) had no idea what he meant. For people in California, she was part of our "tv heritage" from the early 1960s.

The original role of Mrs. Olson was supposed to be that of a domestic servant, which explained why she always seemed to have a bag of groceries (with a metal can of Folger's ON TOP of eggs and other delicate items) with her. Apparently she wore a light blue dress (hard to see in commercials filmed in black and white) that was supposed to be an employee uniform. As her popularity grew, her role became that of a friendly neighbor, they ditched the blue dress (you can see various non-domestic servant outfits in later color commercials), and she was less likely to come barging in the kitchen door with a bag of groceries. Some of the ads began to take place in her own house (she hosts a party; she has friends over to watch tv; a distraught neighbor knocks on Mrs. Olson's kitchen door, etc.) as they transformed her from domestic servant to friendly--if somewhat meddlesome--neighbor. [this post was last edited: 12/15/2010-12:34]
 
Red Rose Tea, Red Rose Tea...

That jingle leapt back into my head when I read the subject line. I remember it from Detroit when I was growing up. They had a TV commercial with monkeys or chimps drinking the tea.

Regarding Folger's Mrs. Olsen, her accent always reminded me of one of my aunts. Neither the aunt nor my mother (her sister) thought it was a flattering comparison.
 
Josephine The Plumber/Klementine The Lady Washing Machine Re

When I was an exchange student in Holland (mid 70s), we could receive one German tv channel along with two channels from Holland. The German channel had these ads for Ariel detergent featuring Klementine, a female washing machine repairwoman.





If the YouTube descriptions are accurate, she was on German tv from at least 1968 to as late as 1993 or later. When I saw the early b&w commercials, I was struck by the similarity between Klementine and Josephine The Plumber of Comet cleanser fame. Same concept, same white overalls and cap with her name embroidered on the bib, etc.

At the time, I thought "what a blatant rip off of the Josephine concept, I wonder if the people who make Comet know about this?" Of course, I did know at age 17 that both Comet and Ariel were P&G products, and P&G was free to import their Josephine concept to German tv. Of course, few if any German viewers in those days had ever seen a US Comet cleanser ad featuring Josephine, so the only people who noticed the similarity would be have transplanted Americans such as I. So they got away with the "stolen concept" with few viewers noticing it.

Josephine was played by Jane Withers. Klementine was portrayed by German actress Johanna König, who passed away about a year or two ago. Below is a link to a P&G Germany page wishing her a happy 85th birthday back in 2006:

www.pg.com

Procter & Gamble: Unser Beitrag für ein besseres Leben

Procter & Gamble (P&G) bietet Verbrauchern weltweit ein starkes Portfolio hochwertiger Marken wie Always, Oral-B, Pampers und Ariel.
www.pg.com www.pg.com

passatdoc++12-15-2010-12-26-50.jpg
 
Red Rose Tea

We still have Red Rose tea here in Vermont. I used to love the television commercials when I was a youngster. Here is a link to one of them with monkeys. There was a colorized one later on that was even better. I actually have some Red Rose here at the house. I am not much of a tea drinker, but on occasion I will take a break from coffee.

 

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