Just to share this sweet photograph and Helen's smile... Somewhere in my house is the original (ca. 1910?) photograph, but today I found this scan of it. The endearing little girl is Helen Housel Napier, from whose estate sale I purchased the original photo. She is holding what I guess are her two favorite things: her doll and a box of Kellogg's Toasted Corn Flakes. She is wearing Roman sandals and a bright, sunny smile.
That is a wonderful picture!!! It would have or actually still would make a great ad for corn flakes!
Not knowing anything about turn of the century children's clothes or shoes, I was curious about her shoes. Anyway, I found this link to a 1912 Sears catalog that is over 1200 pages and is searchable. It has shoes, fabrics, ceramics and on and on. Fun to flip through. Just thought I share the link. It's set to land on some kids shoes but you can find anything and everything! I thought these from the catalog might be similar in style. http://www.archive.org/stream/catalogno12400sear#page/364/mode/2up
Thank you for the helpful and interesting research! I was also inspired by your comment about an ad for Kellogg, so I sent them the photo, too.
I received a speedy reply from Kellogg. Please note: I did not ask them to use the photo in any advertising, or for anything. I just said I thought they might like to see it. I gather from their reply they get a lot of ca. 1910 photos of adorable children holding boxes of Kellogg’s Corn Flakes. Who knew? Oops, I almost forgot to include the reply: “Thank you for sending along this vintage photo of a girl enjoying Kellogg's Corn Flakes® cereal. She certainly looks like one of our most devoted Kellogg's Corn Flakes® cereal fans! It is always a special treat to receive great pictures like these from our loyal consumers. While we won't be able to use the picture in any of our advertising for this brand, we certainly appreciate your reminding us of how much our product has been appreciated. It's thanks to people like you and photos like this that Kellogg has remained successful through the years as we work diligently to create products that our consumers truly enjoy. To thank you for your support, we are enclosing a coupon that we hope you can put to good use. The coupon can be used on one of the many products under the Kellogg family of brands. Enjoy! Please make sure your printer is on and has paper. Then, click on or copy paste the link into a new browser window to print the coupon. Enclosure: 1 Dollar twenty five off coupon”
Well if you like Kellogg's then they sure want to keep you as a happy customer! Nice of them to reply though.
Oh dear, in my attempt at humor I think I wound up sounding snarky, which I regret now. I was surprised at the very fast reply, but was surprised and amused by their comment that they apparently get “photos like this.” I guess it wasn’t as rare as I thought...but I should know by now that the word rare should be used...well...rarely.
Although great that they did get back to you, I found the reply to be kind of pathetic. We certainly appreciate your reminding us of how much our product has been appreciated And a $1.25 coupon with instructions for printing it off. Can only guess that the PR person at the company is overwhelmed and using some kind of bizarre form letter filling in the blanks. But maybe it made him/her smile, too. I really enjoyed seeing the photo. I would have sent it in as well.
And will it jam when you try to print? OTOH, if it goes wrong you do get a second shot. Most Bricks/Smartsource coupons will print twice. (in case you're wondering I use tons of printables; they're better than newspaper coupons half the time, and belong to a points site that pays me to use coupons printed from their link to coupons.com. I get over $100/year that way.)