The Van Trump Report

The Meaty History Behind Oscar Mayer

In 1873, at the age of 14, Oscar Ferdinand Mayer immigrated with his elder cousin, John Scholl, and John’s young family to the United States from Germany. According to the family biography, the Scholls and young Oscar found their way to Detroit, and within days of his arrival, Oscar was combing the streets of Detroit, looking for his first “opportunity.” He found it in the form of a sign in a shop window that read “Junge wollte” (“Boy wanted”). Oscar stepped through the door to find himself in a butcher shop, setting the direction of his entire family for more than a century.
The Butcher Shop: Ten years after arriving in America, at the age of 24, Oscar had saved enough to open his own butcher shop. It was about this time that his first brother — Gottfried — joined him and became the business’s sausage maker. Another brother, Max, joined them a few years later and jumped in as an accountant. The butcher shop was hugely successful thanks to its traditional European techniques. Their sausages especially helped win over the German community. The business continued to grow, helped by the popularity of wieners at the 1893 Chicago World’s Fair.

It was Mayer’s son — also named Oscar — who told his father about a small meat-packing plant on the outskirts of Madison. The company purchased the plant in 1919, mostly because it was cheap and available. It was also closer to farmers, which would cut down livestock transport costs. However, the company soon took an active part in the community and in the lives of its workers. With homes scarce in a tight rental market, Oscar Mayer built 50 affordable homes for workers. They also paid for the extension of the streetcar to the plant to help employees get to work. By 1920, Oscar Mayer’s Madison plant had become the fifth-largest packing plant in the country.

For nearly a century, Oscar Mayer remained an independent company owned primarily by descendants of the Mayer brothers who started it. In 1981, Oscar Mayer stockholders elected to sell the company to General Foods. Four years later, Philip Morris acquired General Foods, and in 1989 merged General Foods with the newly acquired Kraft Foods, which is now Kraft Heinz.

The Yellow Band: First, it’s important to understand the meat industry in America during Mayer’s time. The public was highly suspicious of the industry and its products, especially for things like sausages that could conceal a wide range of undesirable ingredients. This public distrust was fueled by Upton Sinclair’s 1906 best-selling “The Jungle,” which gave a damning look behind the scenes of Chicago’s meatpacking industry.

Leaning into its reputation for quality, Oscar Mayer became one of the first companies to volunteer for government inspections. However, they still had a problem – there was no way to tell which were Oscar Mayer hot dogs. In the early 20th century hot dogs and other pork products were typically sold in big barrels, so wieners from all sources were mixed together. So the company began individually wrapping its hot dogs with distinctive yellow bands to set them apart. Every band featured a stamp declaring how its quality had been approved by government inspection. Even though the yellow band increased the upfront costs, the expense was ultimately worth it – customers soon began actively seeking out Oscar Mayer hot dogs, in turn creating brand loyalty at a time when that didn’t exist in the meat industry. The individual wrappers eventually went away but is still represented on Oscar Mayer modern day hot dog package labels.

The Jingle: The Oscar Mayer hot dog jingle might be more famous than the product itself. In 1962, J. Walter Thompson, the country’s largest advertising company, ran a contest to create a jingle that the Oscar Mayer Co. could use to advertise hot dogs. Richard Trentlage, a Chicago ad man, won the contest with a tune called “The Wiener Song” whose lyrics were:
Oh, I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener,
That is what I’d truly like to be,
‘Cause if I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener,
Everyone would be in love with me.

According to details shared with the Wisconsin State Journal, the inspiration for the song stemmed from something Trentlage’s son said – he wished he was “a dirt bike hot dog,” which apparently meant a “cool kid” back in the early 1960s. So Trentlage thought why not make Oscar Mayer hot dogs cool in the same way? That evolved into the aspirational “I wish I were an Oscar Mayer Wiener” line. Trentlage’s children later appeared on the recording of the song that played in ads. The jingle debuted in 1963 and was used up until 2010. According to the company, it is the longest-running commercial jingle in advertising history. Over the years, ads featuring the tune reached an estimated 49 million families in 19 countries. The original ad can be watched HERE.

The Weinermobile: A fleet of brandmobiles shaped like a hot dog on a bun, called “Wienermobiles”, are used to promote and advertise Oscar Mayer products in the United States. The first Wienermobile was created by Oscar Mayer’s nephew, Carl G. Mayer, in 1936. Although that first Wienermobile was scrapped for metal in the 1940s to aid the US Army during World War II, Oscar Mayer and the Gerstenslager Company created several new vehicles using a Dodge chassis or a Willys Jeep chassis in the 1950s. Modern versions have used GMC and RAM chassis.

The company hires new drivers for its iconic Weinermobile, and that time of year is once again here! It’s a paid gig, too, with “Hotdoggers” (the name for Weinermobile drivers) earning a base salary of $35,000, as well as a weekly allowance of $150 for meals and personal travel, and of course 100% paid hotel expenses. Wanna-be Hotdoggers have until January 31 to apply and only college seniors who are about to graduate are eligible. But be warned, it’s an extremely tough job to land. Less than 1% of applicants are selected for the 12 openings. Oscar Meyer says that makes it harder to become a Hotdogger than it is to get into an Ivy League university.

Bologna: Oscar Mayer popularized a slew of products but one of its biggest feats may have been bologna. The weirdly textured, oddly pink meat has roots in Italy’s “mortadella” which goes back to the 1600s. It’s not clear when it showed up in the U.S. but it has historically been associated with tough economic times. Oscar Mayer sought to change the stigma of bologna being a food for the “poor” with an ad campaign in the 1970s.  Jerry Ringlien, Oscar Mayer’s former vice president of marketing, penned the famous jingle that taught millions of Americans how to spell “bologna.” The commercial starred a 4-year-old actor named Andy Lambros singing the song, and America instantly fell in love.

Nostalgia: The Oscar Mayer bologna song turned 50 years old this year! You may have even seen the commercial lately. The Kraft Heinz brand re-aired the original commercial during the Thanksgiving Day football game between the Chicago Bears and the Detroit Lions, and the spot has continued to run on various channels and online outlets. You can watch the classic commercial HERE.

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