Sunday, January 9, 2011

Glasses with Character

When I was little, my sister and I would have sleepovers with my oldest sister.  Due to the age difference, she was more like an aunt to us.  On those occasions, we would always go out to lunch somewhere.  We didn't eat out much when I was a kid, even at McDonald's, so anything was a treat.  My sister would always ask whether we wanted to go to Pizza Hut or Taco Bell.  This was around 1975 and both were new to St. Louis.  They also both happened to stand right next to each at the intersection of Weber and Gravois roads.  Pizza Hut is still there, but Taco Bell's recognizable structure has been converted into a Chinese restaurant.

No matter how much hinting my oldest sister would make toward Taco Bell, we always chose Pizza Hut.  It was around this time, Pizza Hut had a promotion with Pepsi for giveaway glasses with Warner Bros. characters on them.  I recall getting Henery Hawk and my sister getting Petnuia Pig -- 2 third tier characters from the Warner's roster.  I didn't even know who Henery Hawk was -- still too young to appreciate Foghorn Leghorn, I was a dyed-in-the-wool Bugs Bunny fan.

I had that glass for years, but it finally broke a few years ago.  This past summer, I came across 2 of these glasses, and one just happened to be Henery.  I paid a quarter each for these.



The other was Pepe LePew.


This past summer supplied quite a few character glasses.  I was never a huge Flintstones fan, and these were, I believe,  Hardee's giveaway as a tie-in with the movie from the '90's and The Flintstones' 30th anniversary.  But, they were a quarter each and we needed some glasses.  At least the were they classic cartoon characters and not John Goodman and Rosie O'Donnell.



At a parking lot sale in Kenrick Plaza, I bought a large set of Peanut's glasses.  I'm guessing these are from the early '80's and were a McDonald's giveaway.  (Pink lemonade in the last glass courtesty of my daughter.)



And finally, this last glass features one of the lesser-known restaurant mascots, A&W's Root Bear.

The giveaway glass days are long gone, having passed into poor plastic imitations whose images rub off after a few washings. 


7 comments:

  1. that A&W bear is *awesome*!

    i'm surprised that: (1) you have no star wars or battlestar galactica glasses in attendance, and (2) you didn't mention their lead content ; )

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  2. McDonald's offered glass Shrek glasses when the last Shrek movie came out. They had to recall them all due to a lead paint issue. I'm surprised that you don't have any Muppet glasses from McDonald's.

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  3. Frank,
    I gave all of my BG glasses to you! I've only found a few Star Wars (actually Jedi) glasses at garage sales and I sold those years ago.

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  4. Lammyts1, I've never seen Muppet glasses at garage sales before, I have at antique malls, but they generally want too much.

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  5. @Tom: and i still have them, haha! still missing one of the set, though.... i think it's the apollo one.

    i'm sure you can find more, and the star wars ones show up occasionally. i wish i had the empire strikes back set. : \

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  6. My dad is a retired band teacher (Assumption High School, E. St. Louis, and Edwardsville High & Jr. High Schools). In summer 1975 he had a gig in the pit band at New Salem Village near Springfield, IL which presented nightly performances of a play about the life of Abe Lincoln called "Your Honorable Servant A. Lincoln". I accompanied him for one week and stayed with him and the other musicians & some cast in a local hotel. While in the area, we frequently visited a local Hardee's to collect the Looney Tunes glasses. We were able to get all but one of the dozen or so. Try as we might, we never got my favorite character, Daffy Duck.

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    Replies
    1. I have a Daffy Duck, but he's been through the dishwasher so many times, he's almost a ghost.

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