18-year-old Helena Muffly wrote exactly 100 years ago today:
Friday, August 22, 1913: Nothing much doing.
Her middle-aged granddaughter’s comments 100 years later:
Since Grandma didn’t write much a hundred years ago today, I’ll share a hundred-year-old advertisement for Hydrox cookies and other biscuits made by Sunshine.
Hydrox cookies bring back warm fuzzy memories, and I was disappointed to discover that they are no longer made.
According to Wikipedia they were first made in 1908 by the Sunshine Company. For some unknown reason the cookie’s name was derived from the atomic elements that make up water: hydrogen and oxygen.
Sunshine was sold to Keebler and later Kellogg. Hydrox cookies were discontinued in 2009.
A Hundred Years Ago 
Hydrox cookies sound scary but obviously they were delicious.
It is really strange how the company came up with the cookie name. 🙂
When I was a child, I sometimes went to work with my dad when he was at Silvercup bread, the Sunshine bakery was just down the street. Love the old ads.
When I was young there was a Stroemann Bread factory in the nearby town of Williamsport. Whenever I drove past the factory, I could smell the wonderful smell of warm bread.
I’ve been watching the Little Leaqgue World Series in Williamsport, PA – amazing children aren’t they!
Revelation box…that sounds so exciting! When I was 5 years old in the sixties in the Netherlands we would get every day in school a Sunshine cookie: made with whole grain and extra fat etc to fatten up us skinny kids. Sounds delicious but I thought they tasted awful. We had to sing a little song about the cookie too before eating it. I just could scowl at it;0)
Interesting how they gave kids cookies to fatten them up. . . times sure have changed. 🙂
Oh, my! The memories that flashed into my head when I read this ad! When I was 9 or 10 years old in the late 1940’s, many ads appeared in our local papers and magazines, inviting me to send a few cents and a stamp to receive a sample of wonderful and exciting things. I loved to come home from school to Mom’s warm. home-baked doughnuts and a glass of cold milk, set out on the kitchen table beside a pile of mail just for me!
What a wonderful memory! It sounds like a lot of fun to get samples in the mail.
Wow they did have a 100 year run though!
That’s true–I hadn’t thought about it in that way. 100 years was a pretty good run. 🙂
At first, I wondered why Grandma wrote “Nothing much doing” on days when there was seemingly not anything worth writing about. Why bother?But I think it speaks to her diligence in making sure that the day was accounted for. So many diaries have blank pages that make you wonder whether there was so much going on that there was no time to write or nothing worth writing about.
I think that you are right. It does seem like she was very conscientious and diligent.
I don’t remember Hydrox cookies. Was it a regional brand?
I think that they were national, but I’m not really sure—maybe they were regional.
I remember those well!
So do I. 🙂
Hydrox cookies sound familiar to me also. Nothing much doing here either!
Some days are just like that. 🙂
I love the ads from the old magazines. I just discovered a 1908 issue of Ladies Home Journal in a storage box in the closet! It reminds me so much of your wonderful blog.
Talk about memories! I always wondered about the name. Hydrox sounded so clinical for a cookie.
There’s good news for you, according to that same Wikipedia article 🙂 :
“In 2014, Leaf Brands, creator of Astro Pops, acquired the trademark to Hydrox Cookies….The new Hydrox cookie will be available in most supermarket chains as well as in specialty stores. Leaf Brands plans on releasing the new and improved Hydrox Cookie to the market at the end of 2014.”
Yeah! I’ll have to look for them later this year.