Timeless vintage brands #2 Mr. Peanut

I stumble upon Mr. Peanut while I was looking for another timeless vintage logo to be featured on this special column of my blog. More than to be caught by its design, which I love for its simplicity and imaginary, I have to say that I was also very impressed by the history behind this brand. The founder of Planters was an Italian immigrant in US, named Amedeo Obici, who was run away from poverty of his country at the end of XIX century. When he was only 11 years old he moved from Italy to US to reach an uncle who lived in Pennsylvania after the died of his father. Once he arrived in US he did not find his uncle for a misunderstanding about the date of his arrival and he started to cry desperately because he was not even able to ask for a help in English... a policeman, according to his history, offered him some peanuts in order to calm him... Some years later Amedeo founded the first firm in US to sell toasted and salted peanuts in small packets, and he raised an economic empire upon this snack.

But also the logo has a surprising history that merits to be told. After having been founded, the Planters needed a logo to improve its image amongst customers. And, in order to find the right logo to attract more buyers, Planters launched a public contest: this contest was won by a schoolboy, he too Italian, named Antonio Gentile who imagined a Peanut with spats, white gloves, top hat, monocle and cane, a kind of aristocrat gentleman of snacks. These original intuitions of two Italian young boys produced one best example of timeless logo in world advertising history... and maybe the most Italian of international snack brands!

And I hope you like the rubber stamp that I carved with this logo, with which I produced some little paper bags that you can find on my etsy.