Provenance of a Spoon

Today was cookie-making day with Daughter Number Three-Point-One at my house, and while we were waiting at one point she was using the end of an old wooden spoon to darn her wool gloves. (Yes, my kid darns, patches, reweaves, and generally mends clothes.)

I realized the spoon she was using was one I inherited from my mother, and that she had said was her mother's. So I mentioned that to DN3.1. "Maybe it was even her mother's, for all I know. It looks hand-carved, doesn't it?"

At that point, DN3.1 looked at the spoon more closely and noticed something about it I have never seen in all the years I've had it. 

Mostly worn away on the handle, there is a word, a name:

Kellogg's. 

And of course the interweb knows why that name is there: Spoons like this were given away in 1937 as a premium to people who bought one large or two small packages of Kellogg's All-Bran Cereal. It was promoted in newspapers and on the radio, as well as in grocery stores.

So now I know the age of the spoon: it's five years younger than my mother. It's also a piece of Depression history, since a hardwood item such as this seems like a rather desperate loss-leader, despite the fact that it put the Kellogg's logo into a multitude of kitchens across the country.