Once upon a time, cereal shopping was an adventure.  While mother did the circuit of the aisles, the child would disappear to the cereal section to decide which cereal had the best giveaway.  When mother arrived, negotiations would begin about what brand her darling wanted versus what she was willing to buy.  Once the desire was planted to go for all the prizes, the repeat purchases would create brand loyalty. We can give thanks to the Kellogg Company for putting the first promotional giveaway for children, Funny Jungleland Moving Pictures (1909), in boxes of cornflakes.

European corporations also have used this advertising strategy in the promotion of food products to children.  Several ambitious examples of these collectible premiums about Africa were added to Cotsen’s collection of advertising ephemera as an underused source for studying how children responded to their representation of regions formerly under French control.

Africorama was a promotional giveaway ca. 1967 for Petit-Exquis cookies by L’Alsacienne, which had been baking buttery treats since the 1920s.  The cookie box contained a color enamel metal flag of an African nation.  There were two sets, 20 representing the Muslim countries of Africa, and 28 for the “pays noirs” or Black countries. Cotsen’s set has all of them except for the Rhodesian flag, which is unusual because most copies for sale are seriously defective.   Each set was to be displayed on a  folded cardboard sheet with perforations illustrated by Wilquin, which the child-collector had to write away for.  A full-length portrait of a Berber Tuareg warrior is on the Muslim set, a Bantu warrior on the Black one.   The back of the cardboard display has a big illustrated advertisement for Petit-Exquis, but no clues why L’Alsacienne was issuing this elaborate set.

The second example of a French promotional giveaway, La collection La Vache qui Rit, also dates from the 1960s.  Its format is unusual because the cards had to fit into the little circular cardboard packages containing the famous semi-soft cheese, which had been available in central Africa since the 1930s.   The child determined to assemble a complete set had to convince his mother to purchase over 200 boxes of cheese. Single cards or selections are common, but one as complete as Cotsen’s is very rare.

The unsigned cards illustrate rather attractively African animals, arts and crafts, indigenous costumes, and partnerships between European and African in the Belgian Congo.  They are in French and Dutch.  If cut along the lines on the front and folded as directed, the card could be displayed. There is a caption, but no informational text on the back.  To look at these cards, no one would have any idea that the Congo had been roiled by political turmoil since it was granted independence by Belgium in 1960.To understand why these two French corporations produced such attractive, elaborate promotional giveaways, one needs to know something about the history of European corporate investment in Africa during the twentieth century.   However, have economists studied this phenomenon to learn more about how they reflected corporate strategies for market growth at home and possibly abroad?  Who was responsible for the projects, which could not have executed quickly or cheaply.   Was there a motive other than an economic one for taking on projects like these which could not have been developed quickly and cheaply?

How might the presentation of Africa in these promotions might have affected French children and African children living in France or abroad?  When were French children taught about the history of their country’s colonization of Africa?   Would they have been exposed to news about Africa in the press, radio, and television? What attitudes towards non-European people were reflected in the illustrations? How would they have compared with those in school books, leisure reading, or the media?  Would children have heard similar or different views expressed by the adults in their families?   And do reminiscences of collecting promotional giveaways as children survive?  Is collecting this kind of ephemera bound up with nostalgia in the same way as it is in America?