“Thermos The Bottle” Truck at the 1909 Vanderbilt Cup Race & Wacky Marketing Mobiles
By far the the most unusual vehicle at the 1909 Vanderbilt Cup Race was the "Thermos The Bottle" truck. As seen in this post, Thermos was not the only company to promote their products using wacky marketing mobiles.
Many of these images are from James Hale's book The Wonderful, Wacky World of Marketing Mobiles.
Enjoy,
Howard Kroplick
Mark Johnson, Klingberg Motorcar Festival: "I like the photo of the Thermos-mobile at the Vanderbilt Cup races. I thought you would be interested that we had one of the Thermos-mobiles at our Conours in June along with a house car to advertise the Sears prefab houses and a cottage car promoting cottage rental on the CT coast."
I
In the mid 1920s, Sillito's Bakery constructed this novelty bread van to deliver its goods in England.
This Absolum Tea van was built on a Trojan chassis by coachbuilder A Crofts.
Built in 1918, the Pep-O-Mint truck was built on a Dodge truck chassis. Note the driver behind the round "O".
This Pep-O-Mint Life Savers Candy Roll car was built in the late 1920s and offered much better visiblity for the driver.
In 1918, George Rowney & Company used this Mercedes Benz "pencil van" for the delivery of its art materials.
"The old man" in this shoe car worked for Daniel Neal Children's Shoemakers. It was built on a 1921 Ford Model T chassis by Riverside Motor Works.
Comments
These are certainly very unusual. I’ve heard about them,but I don’t think I’ve ever seen them. Leave it to you to find out these unusual things and let us know about it. We’ll never know what we’ll find out from you. Well that’s it for now.
Every time I see the Thermos car (and now the Rowney “pencil van”), it reminds me of “Shirley Lois, Moon Girl”, the 1929 Hungerford rocket car, <http://sbiii.com/champlc3.html#roketcar> of my mis-spent youth! Sam, III
....and the practice still exists today. Coincidentally, returning to L.I. today traveling on Route 91 in Connecticut we passed an [Oscar Mayer] Weinermobile!
From Jan Hyde:
Thermos bottle keeps drinks cool in the summer, warm in the winter. How does it know???