CRACKER JACK MYSTERY CLUB TOKENS

Just about everyone at one time or other has eaten a box of Cracker Jacks and eagerly looked inside for the prize that was included. The company that was to become Cracker Jack was started up by the Rueckheim brothers, immigrants from Germany. They were not the first to introduce a molasses covered popcorn snack but were the first to develop a way to keep the kernels from sticking to the other kernels in the box. They first introduced their snack to the public at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair. The snack was quite popular with the fairgoers which encouraged the brothers to market their product to the general public. In 1896 the product was registered along with their slogan, The More You eat, The More You Want. Toy prizes were first put into the boxes in 1912 and consisted mainly of baseball cards and toys which were mostly rings, plastic figurines and stickers. Sailor Jack and his dog Bingo were introduced in 1916 and became a registered trademark in 1919. In 1922 the company officially changed the name to Cracker Jack. Until 1937 most of the prizes were made in Japan but deteriorating relations with that country and eventually the war brought change to where the prizes were made. During World War II all prizes were made of paper because metal was needed for the war effort.

In 1933 the Cracker Jack Company launched a promotion called the Cracker Jack Mystery Club. Instead of the usual toy surprise, an aluminum token bearing the portrait of one of the U.S. presidents was included, starting with Washington and ending with FDR (Roosevelt) who was president at the time. Each token listed some general information about the President on the token along with his portrait. To become a member of the Mystery Club you had to send in TEN tokens and in return would receive a certificate proclaiming you as a member of the club along with a small gift and your ten tokens. To avoid having the tokens redeemed a second time they were either marked, cancelled or had a hole punched in them.

Soon after the program was introduced, the number of tokens required for membership was reduced to THREE and then shortly after that the tokens needed were increased to FIVE. The promotion was discontinued in 1936. The Borden Company bought Cracker Jack in 1964 after beating out the Frito-Lay company in a bidding war. In 1997 Frito-Lay bought the company from Borden and in 2016 stopped putting a prize inside the box.

While some people derive pleasure studying the various coins they obtain for their specific collections, I get pleasure searching for whatever the earth may give up to my metal detector. It could be a coin, a piece of jewelry or a long forgotten token such as the piece described. The enjoyment derived comes from the research performed to establish the story behind the object found.

For more information on the New England Numismatic Association, see:
https://www.nenacoin.org/

	NBS (coinbooks.org) Web