There was a time when youngsters in knickers and Shirley Temple curls licked ice cream off Greta Garbo’s face.
If you are older than 50, you probably remember coming out of the neighborhood store with a 5-cent Dixie Cup in one hand and a flat wooden spoon in the other. A pull on the little tab, and the cardboard lid slowly lifted from the cup, revealing half-chocolate, half-vanilla ice cream. After licking the frozen confection from the lid, kids eagerly looked through the waxed paper that covered a photograph on the underside.
Was it Hoot Gibson or Hopalong Cassidy? Or how about the neatest prize of all — Buster Crabbe as Flash Gordon?
Maybe the blurred image was (ugh!) Jane Withers or that guy with the mustache, John Barrymore. More often than not, it was an unswappable movie star — Tyrone Power, Myrna Loy, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. or Norma Shearer.
The waxed paper had to be peeled away slowly because it sometimes stuck to the picture. But if you were lucky … a 10-gallon hat appeared, then the steely eyes and crooked smile of a real cowboy. Zowie! A swell one — Tom Mix!
Youngsters never had to worry about ending up with dimply Shirley Temple; she never appeared on a Dixie lid. But a sports hero like Jimmy Foxx, Carl Hubbell or “Slinging” Sammy Baugh was a keeper.
They were small joys of the Depression Era, to be sure. But those Dixie Cup lids were a precious fixture of childhood in the 1930s. And they maintained an allure through the mid-’50s.
For enlightened latter-day collectors of movie and sports nostalgia, Dixie Cup lids are cherished bits of paper Americana. The cardboard discs in shades of blue, red-wine and sepia remain mainstream mementos of a time when novelties possessed pleasing artistry, while mirroring youthful fantasies.
Produced between 1930 and 1954, Dixie Cup lids and related Dixie premiums sometimes are difficult to date because many stars and sports figures were repeated yearly. At present, the only dependable guide to all Dixie items is Bert R. Sugar’s out-of-print Collectibles: The Nostalgia Collector’s Bible (Quick Fox: 1981).
The introduction to Sugar’s catalog of Dixie Cup lids and premiums was written by Steve Leone of Salem, N.H., and it serves as the basis for this primer on these delightful — and still highly affordable — vintage collectibles.
I SCREAM, YOU SCREAM …
The name “Dixie Cup” harkens to the early 1920s, when the company was known as the Individual Drinking Cup Co. of Easton, Pa. The firm specialized in paper containers for cold beverages.
The first wax-coated Dixie Cups were created at the suggestion of Weed’s Ice Cream Co. in nearby Allentown. They wanted a compact lidded container to hold 3 ounces or so of ice cream that would undersell the popular 10-cent Eskimo Pie. Dixie became a generic name for the waxy container that served many ice cream distributors coast to coast, including Borden’s, Dairylea, DeLuxe, Meadow Gold, Sunfreeze, Reid’s, Rob Roy and Dixie’s.
By 1928, the Dixie Co. developed the “picture lid” program. The idea permitted lithographic images on the underside of a lid without contaminating the dairy food — that is, peelable wax paper. The novel notion was patented and led to annual series of picture lids and a redemption program involving full-color picture premiums.
The first Dixie Cup lids, issued 1930 through 1932, depicted 24 “animal heroes” from the Dixie-sponsored Circus Radio Stories program and, later, Bob Sherwood’s Radio Stories.
The lids became movie collectibles in 1933 with a series of 24 black-and- white pictures of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s most popular stars. Today, the scarcest issues are Garbo, Joan Crawford, Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, with a specimen (complete with pull tab) worth $5 to $15.
Although issued in the thousands, Dixie lids also are less common than expected because they were negotiable. Kids could save up a dozen lids and mail them in for a full-color, 8-by-10-inch photograph of their favorite movie or cowboy star or radio personality.
“The premiums came out between 1935 and 1952,” longtime movie-memorabilia dealer Alan Levine of Bloomfield, N.J., says. “They were mostly movie people. A Roy Rogers today goes for about $35. But a Buck Rogers photo is $125 to $150, and the Flash Gordon is a good one at $200 to $250. A horde of premium photos turned up several years ago, but it was quickly absorbed and hasn’t affected the market.”
DIXIE GOES TO WAR
To further stimulate sales, early Dixie issues featured 24 “mystery” lids in which the faces of two dozen celebrities were blanked out. One mystery lid was equivalent to two regular lids in the redemption of a premium. Mystery lids remain quite rare, since kids seldom held on to a blank Johnny Mack Brown or Bill Tilden.
The popularity of Tom Mix, Ken Maynard and Buck Jones prompted more cowboy stars, and they remained a mainstay of issues through 1941. And Col. Tim McCoy and Charles Starrett, among others, rode forth in brilliant color in the fine premium photos offered.
Along with Sonja Henie, Gene Autry, Alice Faye and Gary Cooper, radio personalities regularly appeared on lids from 1936 to 1938, too, including Jack Benny and Fred Waring. A nice find is the radio Buck Rogers portrait lid. The interplanetary ace from the comic strips was portrayed on the airwaves by Matthew Crowley and is worth $50 or more.
With Pearl Harbor, Dixie issued World War II lids in a “Defend America” series beginning in 1941.
Wartime shortages and problems with ice cream distribution brought a decline in the image quality of lids. By 1948, the quantity of ice cream also was decreased from 3 ounces to 2 1/2 ounces.
With the ’50s — and the rise of TV — Dixie lids had a brief but colorful renaissance. The lids are easy to identity. Printed in color, tinted portions frequently are found inked about 25 percent shy of a full circle.
Among later issues, look for John Wayne, Van Johnson, Bill Elliott, Milton Berle, Lucy and Desi, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis, Red Skelton, Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca and Dagmar, plus stars with staying power — Gable, Bing Crosby and Betty Grable. The lids fetch $5 to $20. Baseball players of the period are desirable, with Richie Ashburn, Nellie Fox, Enos Slaughter and others bringing $50 and up.
In the wake of modern packaging and frozen yogurt, the traditional Dixie Cup of ice cream is mostly a sweet memory. Yet some of the treasures they once held still can be found at rummage sales, antique shops and from specialized dealers.
But collectors still flip their lids.
