Comic Coverage: Classic Ads: Candy of the World's Wonder Children!

Ruth_ad You'd think a product with origins as controversial as the Baby Ruth candy bar would try to avoid more controversy at all costs. When Curtiss Candy introduced the Baby Ruth bar in 1920, everyone assumed they'd named it after baseball superstar Babe Ruth, though they always claimed to have named it after President Grover Cleveland's daughter Ruth (despite the girl having died sixteen years earlier). Sounds like a dodge from paying Babe Ruth royalties, right? Right.

Flash forward two decades to 1940, as Curtiss Candy once again dives headfirst into controversy.

In this ad that I oh-so-carefully scanned from my copy of Superman #15, we can see that Curtiss enlisted the infamous Dionne Quintuplets to sell their Baby Ruth candy bars (click on the ad for a quintuple-sized view).

Who were the Dionne Quintuplets? Quick history: Shortly after their birth in 1934, their parents signed a contract to live in a special World's Fair facility where the public could view "The Quints". Following an angry public outcry, the government of their native Canada removed the babies from their parent's custody and put them under the guardianship of four government officials. Now that the Canadian government had saved the baby girls from crass exploitation, they almost immediately began exploiting the girls themselves. Housed in a specially-built government facility, the Quints and their "caretakers" could be viewed in an observation room twice a day by the public. When the facility was expanded to a "Quintland" themepark, an average of 6,000 people a day came to view the Dionne sisters...eventually surpassing Niagara Falls as Ontario's most popular tourist attraction!

It's against this backdrop of ignorance and exploitation that we return to the Baby Ruth ad. Now that the "World's Wonder Children" were receiving their "first and only candy", let's see why the Canadian government selected Baby Ruth for such a momentous occasion:

Br_ad_1

Ah, yes..."pure, wholesome candy made of fine, natural foods".
And what might those "fine, natural foods" be?

Dextrose

Dextrose? Isn't that just a type of SUGAR?
That's the "fine, natural food" in a Baby Ruth bar?

What did the medical community of the time have to say about this?
Let's ask Dr. Allan Roy Dafoe for his opinion...

Dafoe

Okay, that's better. I mean, if a real doctor thinks a Baby Ruth bar is "wholesome" for children, I guess it was okay for the Dionne Quintuplets to make this their first candy experience.

Unless, of course, that doctor was actually one of the Quint's government-appointed guardians!

It's true! Allan Roy Dafoe was one of the creeps who allowed the Quints to be viewed by the public. Need more proof? The government facility they lived in was named the Dafoe Hospital and Nursery. I knew there was something creepy about that guy!

So, the next time you enjoy a "wholesome" Baby Ruth bar, be sure to think about the five little girls who enjoyed the nutritious bounty of dextrose while 6,000 nose-picking rubes stared at them.