In My Footsteps: A Gen-X Nostalgia Podcast

Episode 185: House Party Turns 35, Poppin’ Fresh’s Restaurant, & Obsolete Jobs From 100 Years Ago(3-5-2025)

• Christopher Setterlund • Season 1 • Episode 185

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Episode 185 helps March roar in with a blast of nostalgia, from '90s party vibes to long-lost professions!

🎬 House Party Turns 35! – One of the best teen comedies of the ‘90s is officially middle-aged. We’re throwing it back to Kid ‘n Play, Martin Lawrence, Tisha Campbell, legendary dance moves, and quotable lines. Plus, I’ll share a personal house party story that could’ve been its own movie.

🥖 Poppin’ Fresh: The Doughboy & His Lost Restaurant – He’s been giggling his way through Pillsbury ads for 60+ years, but did you know Poppin’ Fresh once had his own restaurant? We uncover the surprising history of Poppin’ Fresh Pies—and what happened to it.

🛠️ Jobs That Time Forgot – Ever applied to be a lector? A scissors grinder? No? That’s because these jobs disappeared long ago. This week’s Top 5 spotlights careers from a century ago that no longer exist—some of which were way cooler than they sound.

🏀 This Week in History & Time Capsule – The night Wilt Chamberlain did the unthinkable and scored 100 points in a single basketball game.

Hit play and let’s get this nostalgia party started! 🚀

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Speaker 00:

Hello, world, and welcome to the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, coming to you from the vacation destination known as Cape Cod, Massachusetts, and this is episode 185. March has arrived. Is it coming in like a lion? I don't know. Maybe you'll be roaring with laughter from the nostalgia on this podcast. We're going to kick it off with a look back 35 years at one of my favorite movies from my childhood, House Party and its 35th anniversary. We're going to go way, way back in the day and take a deep dive into Poppin' Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy, including when he had a restaurant named after him. There'll be a brand new top five that are the top five obsolete jobs that were popular a century ago. You won't find any of these on an Indeed application resume. And there'll be a brand new This Week in History and Time capsule looking back at the famous game where Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points. All of that is coming up right now on episode 185 of the In My Footsteps podcast. So what are we going to talk about this week? About the fact that I don't have kids, but I sure as hell have dad jokes that are just filled with cheese. Roaring with laughter. That was a pretty good one. Welcome in, everybody, to the podcast. Thank you for tuning in. Spring is on the horizon. I hope wherever you are, it's getting warmer. I've noticed it on Cape Cod. Ooh, man. Upper 40s. It's like being in a tropical island. I will say, this winter was... deceptively bad. Like we didn't get a lot of snow on Cape Cod, but it felt like the weather was cold enough and dreary enough. I didn't really get outside that much. For example, last week I went for a long walk because you've got to walk before I can run for my next race. Anyway, I did just over five miles and my legs were really sore. And the reason why was because it was the longest I had walked in two and a half months since the first week of December. And I didn't think it had been that long, but there you go. Winter got his claws into me. But we're thawing out. I can't start off the podcast without thanking my Patreon subscribers. Lori, Mary Lou, Ashley, Kevin, Leo, Marguerite, Neglectoid, Crystal, and Matt. Thank you all so much for being my biggest fans, biggest backers. I hope you enjoyed the new monthly bonus episode over on Patreon, as well as the first Without a Map livestream from four years ago that I remastered and put up there. That's going to be something I'll probably do one of those a month, likely in the middle of the month. So you start off with a new bonus episode of the podcast, and then the middle of the month you get a remastered livestream. I mentioned a minute ago, going on a long walk. Sometimes I get my best ideas for the podcast or content in general when I'm wandering out on the bike trails. And one I was so excited about, I have to tell you about before we even get started. What I'm going to do in the future is podcast episodes that are going to be just a single year. So it'd be the same format that I do. But for example, it would be say 1975. So everything would be from that year. And as we go, it's going to be, it could be any year from 1960 to 2005. Those won't be all the time, but it popped in my head. I said, oh, that's such a good idea. So be on the lookout for those. Another idea from my brain. Also, by the time you listen to this podcast, I will likely have filmed my second of three scenes for the indie horror film that Frank Durant is producing that I have a small part in playing myself, the podcaster. I filmed the first scene, and the director, the main man on the film that Frank has kind of put in charge, he liked my work, so I was thrilled. Because I've never done real acting. So the fact that he liked it gave me confidence, so... I'll be filming my second of three scenes probably before this podcast goes live. Maybe when I film all the scenes and the movie is released, maybe I'll have a house party to celebrate. Probably not. But what we can do is segue into one of my favorite movies ever, which is celebrating its 35th anniversary this week. The Kid and Play special house party. Oh, I can't wait to talk about this. So let's just get into it right now. Sometimes I get lucky with finding content for the podcast, my timing. So going back a few weeks ago, I was on YouTube just surfing around, and I had a video recommended for me. And it said, mini house party reunion as kid from Kid and Play surprised Tisha Campbell on a talk show. Naturally, I watched it. I love Tisha Campbell. I had a crush on her in the early 90s. And I remembered how much I love the movie House Party. So the first thing I did after I watched the video was I went online to see when its anniversary was because I knew it was from 1990. And to my surprise, pleasant surprise, it was released March 9th, 1990. So I immediately went into my future podcast list and I found the episode that would correspond with that week. And I said, oh, we're talking about House Party's 35th anniversary. Those of you that know me, obviously you know I grew up on Cape Cod, you may be surprised to find that House Party is one of my favorite movies ever. A big reason why hip-hop culture was such a big part of my life in the late 80s through the early to mid 90s was because of one of my closest friends named Hassan. He moved into the neighborhood not far from me, probably when we were 11, maybe 12 years old. It was after fifth grade going into sixth grade. And what I loved about Hasan, and still do to this day, is that he didn't push himself as far as what he liked on me. He just introduced it. It was kind of like, if you like what I like, great. If not, I'm not going to force you. I'm not going to change who I am. We both had a love of basketball, so I think that connected us. And we started playing music outside of my house when we played basketball. He introduced me to a lot of great hip-hop from the late 80s. Public Enemy, Heavy D and the Boys, Slick Rick, Eric B and Rakem, Wu-Tang Clan, KRS-One. I could just keep naming them, but you get the point. And even though the music was written more for an African-American audience... Describing their culture and issues they dealt with in society, I loved the music in general. Hasan and I were super tight through middle school to the beginning of high school. We drifted apart a little, mainly because I wasn't good at basketball, so he played on the school teams all through high school, and so his friends were the players on the team with him. But we reconnected years later. I just saw him only a few months ago. He came down to Cape Cod from Boston to see my mother for her birthday. That should tell you all you need to know about the kind of man Hassan is. There you go, Hassan. If you listen to this, boy, do I pump you up. But it's all true. So now we get to House Party. This movie came out. I didn't know who Kid and Play were. But in the early 90s, hip-hop culture was making its way from the streets to the big screen, bringing with it fresh storytelling and the music and the style. And House Party was one of the films that captured that energy, humor, and excitement. The movie House Party was originally conceived as an independent short film by director Reginald Hudlin. It won accolades at the Sundance Film Festival, which I did not know. But this short film caught the attention of New Line Cinema, and they saw the potential for a feature-length adaptation. The studio took a chance on the project, allowing Hudlin to expand on his vision and turn it into one of the most beloved teen comedies of the 90s. When you get down to it, the film's premise is simple. A high school student named Kid, played by Christopher Reed of Kid and Play, sneaks out of his house to attend a wild party thrown by his best friend Play, Christopher Martin. And along the way, he encounters bullies, he has a strict father, and there's plenty of comedic mishaps. And even if you're not African American, if you don't live in the city or the suburbs, if you're a rural 12-year-old white kid from Cape Cod, you could relate to this type of story. I was only a few years away from wishing I could go to actual house parties like that. And I will share a little bit of my first house party experience at the end of this segment. Sorry, Hassan. At the heart of house party is the chemistry between kid and play. They're a hip hop duo. They have albums out, but you can tell that they're friends and you can tell they enjoy working together. Kid had the iconic high top fade where they would call him a racer head. The people that didn't like him. And he would have to deal with the bullies Stab, Peewee, and Zilla. They are actually another hip-hop group called Full Force. Fun facts about Full Force. Boy, there's a lot of Fs. Not only is their song Ain't My Type of Hype, which is in the house party, like in the middle of it, there's the iconic dance scene. That's them. They helped to discover the R&B group of the mid-80s, Lisa Lisa and Cult Jam. They had songs, Lost in Emotion, Head to Toe, I Wonder If I Take You Home. But this is the one that you may have to pull over and be shocked. Full force, they actually sang backup on a Bob Dylan album. The song I could find is called Death Is Not The End, and it's off of Dylan's album Down in the Groove from 1988. So when you talk about odd musical collaborations, which may end up being a top five at some point, Full Force and Bob Dylan might be at the top. For me, besides the comedy and lots of swears in this movie, the music was really what made it stand out. I love that song, Ain't My Type of Hype. I have it on my phone, on my playlist. There's also an excellent song by Luther Vandross. The song is called Bad Boy Havin' a Party. And for those of you that know the movie, it's playing when Kidd sneaks out of his window to go to play his party. His adventure from sneaking out of his house to get to the party, just the people he sees, he ends up at a party where it's a lot of rich, older people, and the guy who's the DJ is George Clinton. He hops someone's fence to escape from the bullies, and he's watching this big, big fat guy have sex with a woman super loud. Mind you, I was 12 years old when I first saw this, so this was a lot of eye-opening stuff for me. Of course, you had Tisha Campbell as Sydney, who ends up being kids' love interest, and A.J. Johnson as Shireen, who kind of plays, for lack of a better term, plays play. You had Martin Lawrence in probably one of his earliest roles as Bilal, who always had the bad breath. The girls would say he had dragon breath. Perhaps the biggest highlight of the movie is Robin Harris as Kid's father. He is so funny and so quick with his jokes and insults. I especially cracked up when he showed up at the house party and he was yelling about public enema. Who the hell's public enema, anyway? Oh man, he was so funny. So it was sad that by the time I saw this movie, he had already passed away. He died of a heart attack nine days after the movie was released. House Party had a budget of $2.5 million and made more than $26 million upon its release. It's also 94% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, which really made me feel good because I loved this movie since I was a kid. So to know that The vast, vast majority of people like it who have seen it. That made me feel like I had good taste. House Party had a big cultural significance. With its success, it opened the door for other African-American-led movies like Friday or Barbershop. Kid and Play even had a semi-hit song not long after this movie called Ain't Gonna Hurt Nobody, which was pretty good. And there were sequels, House Party 2, where a kid goes to college. That one was good. House Party 3, I have never seen because Tisha Campbell was in it for about three seconds. So I said, that's probably not good. And the movie still holds up to this day. 35 years later, I could watch it and probably will watch it tonight after recording the podcast. But I laugh at all the jokes. I love all the music. And it brings me back to being in sixth grade. I highly recommend you check out House Party at least once if you haven't seen it. But I did promise a few minutes ago the story of my first house party. Freshman year of high school. I was 15 years old. I'm not going to name any other names, but I will say I was there with Hasan. We got invited to a kid's house. His parents were away. I don't remember offhand how many of us were there because we're going back to 1993. It could have been 6, 8, 10. I don't know. There was some booze there. I know I at least had one. I can't speak for Hassan. I don't want to get him in trouble. We were freshman boys in high school, so naturally the cops got called because we were loud and rowdy and probably outside somewhat. One thing I can remember about this party before we had to flee when the cops showed up, was one of the kids trying to rinse his mouth out with scope so that his parents wouldn't smell the alcohol. And he accidentally swallowed some and ended up throwing up everywhere. But during his throwing up, he was celebrating like he had just scored a touchdown. Man. So Hasan and I took off into the surrounding neighborhood. And it was sort of like house party. We were going through yards, hiding, going under people's windows. Because we were in a... residential neighborhood, but we weren't exactly sure where we were. We ended up finding our way to Route 28, which is the main road on Cape Cod. It goes all the way from Falmouth up to Provincetown. We found ourselves a payphone. Yes, that's the period of time we're talking about. We had to call probably my mother to come and pick us up in the blue station wagon. I don't remember if any of the kids at the party got nabbed by the cops. I know Hasan and I were like, we're gone as soon as we saw the lights. It was like, it was every man for himself, but he and I were, we were a team. So it was like, I wasn't going to leave him. He wouldn't leave me. Now I do remember some of the people that were at this party. So if any of you are listening, feel free to reach out and laugh a little bit about that. But there's a bit of the story of my first house party. as we celebrate the 35th anniversary of House Party, one of my favorite movies ever. And yes, I'll probably be watching it tonight, but I will not be mimicking any dance moves. I don't know if my old bones can handle it anymore. This week in history, we are going back 63 years ago to March 2nd, 1962 and the famous basketball game where Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points. I have said since my childhood and will continue to say that Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player ever. But if you out there want to challenge me and say Wilt Chamberlain was better, this is the Exhibit A that you could use against me. Michael Jordan, at his best, scored 69 points as a career high, whereas on March 2, 1962, Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points. For those who don't know who Wilt Chamberlain was, he was a 7-foot-1-inch center. He entered the NBA in 1959 and was a revelation. He came in along with Bill Russell, and it was this big man with athleticism, scoring ability, rebounding prowess. He was virtually unstoppable. He averaged 50 points a game in one season. Just think about that. It's like he had more 50-point games in one season than the average 500 NBA players have combined in their careers. So this game was between the Philadelphia Warriors, now Golden State Warriors, which Wilt Chamberlain played for, and the New York Knicks. This was held at the Hershey Sports Arena. There were fewer than 4,000 fans in attendance. And what's crazy is the game wasn't televised. So there's no visual evidence of this game, except for the famous picture of Wilt with the piece of paper that says 100 on it. Chamberlain started off with 23 points in the first quarter and 18 in the second so he had 41 points in the first half by the end of the third quarter he had 69 points which is Michael Jordan's career high so he had it in three quarters then in the fourth quarter Wilt Chamberlain surged past the all-time record for points in a game that was 78 which he also set And by this point in the fourth quarter, the people that were there knew something special was going on. So it was insanity. He finally hit the basket that gave him 100 points and the crowd went nuts. So in the game, the Warriors won 169 to 147. Wilt Chamberlain finished with 100 points on 36 of 63 shooting from the field, 28 of 32 from the free throw line. Oh, and he also had 25 rebounds in the game too. Wilt Chamberlain has the record for most 70-plus point games with five in his career. Wilt Chamberlain also holds the NBA record with 118 50-plus point games, just to give you that stat. Yes, Michael Jordan is second. How many 50-plus point games did he have in his career? 31. This game by Wilt Chamberlain changed how the NBA was played. It fueled discussions about rule changes to contain dominant big men. The NBA would later widen the lane and implement rules to limit offensive advantages for players of Wilt Chamberlain's caliber. So think about that. They changed the rules of the game because he was too dominant. And in the more than six decades since this game, nobody has come close to replicating Wilt Chamberlain's feat. The closest was Kobe Bryant, who scored 81 points in a game in 2006. That's what's crazy is that Kobe Bryant, one of the best players ever, on his best night, still couldn't come within 19 points of Wilt Chamberlain's best. And Michael Jordan, who I still think is the best player ever, on his best night was 31 points short of Wilt Chamberlain. Wow, it's unreal. And that 100-point game... by the all-time legend Wilt Chamberlain occurred 63 years ago this week in history. We'll keep the good times rolling with a brand new time capsule. We're going to stick to that same day. So Wilt Chamberlain is scoring 100 points in Hershey, Pennsylvania on March 2nd, 1962. What was going on in the world of pop culture back then? Let's find out. The number one song was Duke of Earl by Gene Chandler. This song has a beginning that likely most of you can hear in your head right now. The song was released as a single by Chandler, and it spent three weeks at number one, easily being his greatest song of his career. It's obvious that Chandler knew this was his biggest song, because only a few months later, he released a sequel song called Walk On with the Duke. It did not do as well, topping the chart at number 91. The number one movie was The Premature Burial, and you could get into the theater with a ticket costing 70 cents. This was a horror mystery movie based on an Edgar Allan Poe story about an Englishman who is obsessed with the fear of being buried alive. It's 56% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes, so it's hovering right below fresh. I couldn't find how much the budget was for this movie, but its box office take of between one and one and a half million has it classified as a quote-unquote moneymaker. So take that as you will. The number one TV show was Wagon Train. This is a western about a wagon train and their adventures heading from Missouri West to California. The show was on for eight seasons and 284 episodes between 1957 and 1965. It's also known for having a lot of very famous guest stars throughout the years, including Ernest Borgnine, Lon Chaney, Betty Davis, Dennis Hopper, Leonard Nimoy, Leslie Nielsen, and Ronald Reagan. And if you were around back then, March 2nd, 1962, You had to go to the store, get something from the grocery store. Well, if you were a young mother going to the A&P with your kids, you're in luck because they've got plaid stamps you can collect to get great prizes and gifts for your kids. There's little things like baby dolls and kids' seats. There's bigger things like film projectors, toaster ovens, and phonographs. So make sure to go to A&P. Buy lots of stuff and get your books of plaid stamps and get yourself a nice new coffee maker or phonograph using those stamps. That wraps up another time capsule, another This Week in History. Naturally, you need money to go to the store and buy things at A&P. Well, unfortunately, A&P's not around today anymore, and neither are these jobs. As we look back at the top five obsolete jobs from a century ago, Coming up now. Anybody of you out there looking for a new job, you're on Indeed, you're on ZipRecruiter. I have some sad news for you because all of these jobs I'm about to share with you, you will not find openings for. What we're going to look at is the top five obsolete jobs from a century ago. This one I had to do some bit of research on, especially to fill out a top five and honorable mentions, looking at jobs that were maybe not the most popular, but that were around in the 1920s and see which of those are just nowhere to be found today. It was interesting to look up what the most popular jobs were from the 1920s. A lot of them were working in mills or on farms. Because you got to remember in the 1920s, I mean, radio had just come out. So there wasn't anything for radio or radio repair. There was no TV. There sure as hell wasn't any internet. There were no jobs as influencers on social media back in the 1920s. But what there were, were some that were very obvious that they would have been popular at the time. And then there were some others that I didn't know existed. And we're going to run the gamut. We're going to go through all of it right now. So as with most of these top fives, there are some honorable mentions. They are in no particular order. And if your resume includes any of these jobs, you may be super duper old. And if you are super duper old and listening to this podcast, thank you so much for tuning in. And I hope I didn't offend you. Honorable mentions for the obsolete jobs from a century ago include pin setters. These are the people that would reset the bowling pins in a bowling alley. Naturally, that has been automated for quite a long time. Another honorable mention was elevator operator. These are the people that would literally be in charge of the elevator. You step in, you tell them the floor, they would send you up. You'd be in there with this elevator operator. Again, this has been automated for decades. Another honorable mention was was lector. It is not some super villain. A lector was somebody that would read to people that were working in a mill or a factory. They were the entertainment before radio or internet. So you'd have someone reading you a story while you worked or the newspaper or something, whatever. Another honorable mention was soda jerk. No, not a bad person that poured drinks for you. This was in the old-timey general stores, drug stores. You'd saddle up to the bar or the counter and the person would make you a drink, usually something sweet. These people might still be around, a handful of them, in the places that are meant to be vintage. I know not too far from me on Cape Cod, there's a place called Hallett's General Store. It's been around since the 1880s. I haven't been in there since I was a kid, but they may have a soda jerk there. And the last honorable mention is projectionist. These are the people that would set up the motion picture reels of film so you could watch the movies in the theater. With movies now being mainly digital and it's all automated at the theaters, having someone sitting up there running the projector isn't really necessary anymore. So those are the honorable mentions. Were you familiar with any of those? I figure elevator, operator, pin setter, soda jerk. You probably heard of those. And some of you might have been projectionists. It wasn't that long ago that that went out of style. Oh, but get ready. In the actual top five, I doubt any of you have had these jobs. We'll start it off with number one, ice cutters. Those of you that... are familiar with the Three Stooges. You may remember there's an episode where they are ice delivery men. They show up with their refrigerated truck and the people would yell to them, Iceman, give me whatever amount of ice. And they would have to chop up the bits, bring it in. Because back then, your refrigerator, you had something called an icebox. And you would literally put ice in it and it would slowly melt, but it would keep your food cool for, I don't know, several days a week. So just like back then when you had milkmen deliver your milk, you had an iceman deliver your ice. As electric refrigerators and freezers became more common in the 40s and 50s, ice cutters weren't necessary anymore. They all went to become the sculptors you see in the parks in the winter that use chainsaws to make swans out of big blocks of ice. Number two is physiognomist. This is one of the craziest ones from this list. A physiognomist is a person who supposedly can judge your character based on your face, your facial expressions, your facial features. It's like walking into an office and the person looks at you and says, I know you're a jerk based on your cheekbones. Like, really? This was a real job. Obviously, this kind of a job is complete garbage. You can't judge a person based on their outward appearance. I mean, you could tell someone is overweight or older or skinny based on what you see, but that doesn't make them bad or evil or prone to being a thief or any of that crap that this job seems to be able to predict. I also couldn't find if you had to go to college back in the 20s to become a physiognomist. Like they would have someone walk in front of the class and that's your final project is to judge who they are based on looking at them. God, get out of here. We go from stupidly absurd to a job that was actually hugely popular back then. And that's number three, switchboard operator. Way back then, the first half of the 20th century, probably up through the 50s and 60s, there were actually people that would connect your phone call. You dial the operator, tell them who to connect you to, and that's what they would do. That's how you would get through to people. It wasn't as simple as just dialing the phone. It was dialing operator and saying, connect me to so-and-so or their phone number, KL573, and you'd connect them, and that's great. So many movies and short films, comedies in the 20s, 30s, and 40s. There's lots of scenes with switchboard operators in them. Judging by how popular this job was back then, it must have been one of those that the people that did it as a job probably couldn't have imagined there would have come a day that it was obsolete. I think that's the thing with a lot of technological advances, like whatever's popular even today in the 2020s. There may come a time 20, 30, 40 years from now that it's not there anymore. Number four is caddy butcher. Yes, you've heard of a regular butcher. They are still around today. But a caddy butcher specialized in horse meat. This job was popular up through the 1940s, especially in the US and in the UK. Horse meat was cheaper than typical beef. These guys hung around the racetrack, waited for the loser, and shoved him in the slaughterhouse. It's not that easy. It's amazing to think now, if you think about eating horse meat, it's like, oh man, really? You don't do that. But a hundred years ago, it was common. And so much so that caddy butcher was a popular occupation, especially in the areas of the country where horse meat was more readily consumed. I don't know where that would be, but it had to be a lot of places for this to be a job. And finally, number five on the list of top five obsolete jobs from a century ago is scissors grinder. It's literally what it says. Someone that would come to your house and sharpen your scissors, your knives, anything else that you had. Mainly because this was a time where if your scissors got dull, most people couldn't afford to go out and buy a new pair. Or if your knives got dull, you made do with what you had. So here came this job where someone would come and knock on your door and sharpen your scissors. Over the decades, the rise of home sharpening equipment grew, and with an increase in affordability of scissors and knives and anything else you needed sharpening, axes, whatever, that made it where you didn't need someone coming to your house. You imagine how busy you would have been in the 20s, having Milkman, Iceman, Scissor Grinder, they all show up on the same day. Like you're just trying to sit on the porch and read. You got all these people showing up doing stuff like that. But there you have it. Five obsolete jobs from a century ago and some honorable mentions. You will not find these on anyone's resume, on Indeed, on ZipRecruiter, on your LinkedIn profile. And if you want the job of most famous doughboy, that is taken. So let's do a deep dive into the story of Poppin' Fresh coming up right now. Oh, man. 15-year-old me is so excited doing a podcast segment talking about Poppin' Fresh, a.k.a. the Pillsbury Doughboy. But it actually came to my attention last week when doing the defunct casual dining chain segment, the top five. It was when doing the research about steak and ale that I realized that they were at one point owned by Pillsbury. And I went down the rabbit hole, and that's where I was looking at it, and I saw that they had a place at one point, a restaurant chain called Poppin' Fresh Pies. So it was destiny. I said, I need to do a segment about Poppin' Fresh, the Pillsbury Doughboy, and Poppin' Fresh Pies, the restaurant. Well, believe me, this segment is going to be filled with clips, starting with this sound. Yes, the Poppin' Fresh noise when you poke his stomach. When I was a kid growing up in the 1980s, there were some mascots that were in commercials that really spoke to me. It's like I wanted them to be toys that I could play with. Poppin' Fresh was one. Snuggles the Bear was another. The Helping Hand from Hamburger Helper. And I will say when I got a little bit older, I did have a Snuggles Bear and a Poppin' Fresh. I think I had three of them. Man, I guess I was like really fanboying out for Poppin' Fresh. Man, there's something to admit. But leave me alone. Poppin' Fresh is 60 years old now. He was created in 1965 by the Leo Burnett Advertising Agency to promote Pillsbury's refrigerated dough products. Little did they know at the time, the soft, doughy exterior, the infectious giggle, that Poppin' Fresh would influence pop culture.

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The

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actual idea for Poppin' Fresh came from Rudy Purrs, a copywriter at the agency who envisioned a friendly, animated character that would pop out of a can of dough. At the beginning, Poppin' Fresh was more stop-motion animation. Pillsbury embraced the concept and they ran with it. The character would have been harder to make at the beginning with a clay model animated frame by frame. The commercials, though, starting in the late 60s, early 70s, all kids liked Poppin' Fresh. He was friendly. little tiny dough boy with the chef hat on. No, he didn't wear any clothes. He was just dough. And he would be there as parents and kids were making crescent rolls or regular rolls or whatever else Pillsbury products you had. He'd be friendly explaining why they were good. And then for some reason at the end of the commercials, the children felt the need to assault him by gouging at his stomach. That giggle that Poppin' Fresh did, that's what he's probably known for the most. There were also the Poppin' Fresh Dough jingle. Yeah, that one. That's a big staple of my childhood, that Poppin' Fresh Dough song. The original voice of Poppin' Fresh, and I think through... All of my childhood was a man named Paul Freese, and he was the one he voiced characters like Boris Badenoff from Rocky and Bullwinkle. He also did voice for the Wonderful World of Disney shows. He was Inspector Fenwick from Dudley Do-Right. He played Santa Claus in the Frosty the Snowman animated film in the late 1960s. That one is still on TV a lot to this day. Andy was also the voice of John Lennon and George Harrison in the Beatles animated series in 1965. Sadly, Freeze died in 1986 at the age of 66 from an overdose of pain medication. And after that, Poppin' Fresh was voiced by different people, most specifically Jeff Bergman, who voiced him from 1986 to 2014. So... A lot of you out there that grew up with Poppin' Fresh in the 90s and 2000s, that's the guy who did The Voice.

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So Poppin'

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Fresh was born 60 years ago in 1965. Only a couple of years later comes the part that shocked me when I was doing my research on last week's show. In December 1969, the Pillsbury Corporation bought a restaurant called Mrs. C's, which was a single standalone location in Des Moines, Iowa. Pillsbury changed the name from Mrs. C's to Poppin' Fresh Pies, and then started to open more locations, making it a chain.

Speaker 01:

What happens when you bring home a poppin' fresh pie? No wonder people love poppin' fresh pies. We make them fresh daily with just one thing in mind.

Speaker 00:

Poppin' Fresh Pies was a family-style restaurant, but they specialized in home-style pies and baked goods and capitalizing on Pillsbury's reputation for quality baking. So think of it like any other casual dining chain, like the ones I was talking about last week. They were very similar to that. Even though they were called Poppin' Fresh Pies, they didn't feature the Doughboy front and center, which I was kind of sad. When I was looking at their logos, it was mainly an apple that said Poppin' Fresh Pies in the middle of it. From what I could find through my research, Poppin' Fresh Pies was mainly a Midwest location. You know, since the original Mrs. C's they bought was in Iowa. It's Iowa, Illinois. And throughout the 70s, they slowly started expanding out. They even reached California. As they expanded, they expanded the menu. It was classic American comfort food. And they had their share of commercials.

Speaker 03:

It seems that no matter how delicious we make our food at Poppin' Fresh, some people just can't wait to get to our pies. Poppin' Fresh Restaurants.

Speaker 00:

What I could find, and I can't find the timing of it, but at its peak, Poppin' Fresh Pies had about 500 locations, which that comes back to how did I not know about this place until last week? In 1983... Pillsbury sold Poppin' Fresh Pies chain to Vicorp, which was a parent company of Village Inn. Following that acquisition, all Poppin' Fresh Pies were rebranded as Baker's Square, and they are still in operation to this day. It hasn't been all sunshine and rainbows, though, for Baker's Square. Going from that peak of about 500 restaurants, they have slowly been declining over the last 15 years. including its parent company filing for bankruptcy at the beginning of 2020. As far as I can see today, it looks like there may be less than 20 Baker's Square restaurants left, with some of their pies being sold through another restaurant chain called Famous Dave's. Have any of you out there gone to Baker's Square or Famous Dave's and had any poppin' fresh pies? So Poppin' Fresh Pies went away, but Poppin' Fresh, the man, the legendary dough boy, stuck around. You couldn't have grown up in the last 50 years and not have seen one Poppin' Fresh commercial.

Speaker 04:

It's me! Here's a rap that you should know, made with Pillsbury Crescent Rolls. Just wrap a wiener filled with cheese, make it up, and sure to please. The Doughboy Rap!

Speaker 00:

or seen him in newspaper ads, or face on merchandise from kitchenware to stuffed toys like I had. It's easy to see why they kept popping fresh around when little kids are watching and they see this four-inch tall dough boy with a squeaky high voice and laughing when you poke his stomach. You want your parents to go buy the crescent roll so you can see the package with his face on it. Like I said, I had three different poppin' fresh toys. So I had one that was a keychain for my first car. So I had this probably three inch long poppin' fresh keychain, which probably wasn't too safe when driving because that thing would swing around. I had a larger stuffed one, which I think I still have in my mom's basement. He was stuffed in his body and his head was harder. And I also had more of a plastic one that you could bend, and that was the one that my friends and I used in a skit once with my camcorder, where it was a commercial shoot with Poppin' Fresh, but nothing went right, so with every take he would get more angry, and his squeaky voice turned into a real deep, angry yell, and he would yell at the staff. I wanted to do a sequel skit where he went on a rampage and killed all of us, but that never ended up getting made. I went looking and couldn't find any Poppin' Fresh board game or video game. So sadly, there's nothing like that where you can have them go on adventures. So 60 years in, Poppin' Fresh is one of the most famous product mascots ever. He started off as just this clever marketing idea and expanded into the restaurant world, hundreds of TV commercials. And every time I see one of those old commercials, it just brings me back the warm, fuzzy nostalgia of being a kid. And I figure as long as Pillsbury continues to bake, Poppin' Fresh will likely continue to pop up and delight generations to come. But until next time, that's going to wrap up episode 185 of the In My Footsteps podcast. Thank you for listening. Thank you for making it all the way to the end. Hopefully you've had your fill of nostalgia for the day. If you like my content, you can become a subscriber on Patreon for $5 a month, bonus podcast episodes, other special features including now the remastered live streams. You can also support me by buying me a coffee. That's, you know, one-time things as low as a dollar, which won't buy me a coffee, but still. Check out my Etsy store featuring my New England photography. I'm really trying to start hyping that up. I add new photos every week. I've got hundreds, thousands of photos from over the years. Lots of them will make excellent portraits in your house. So go and check it out. The link is in the description of the podcast. But you can also support me and support my work by sharing it, spreading it around, word of mouth. That's really the best way to support content creators is to bring more eyes to their work, ears to their work. And I got lots of work. I have hundreds of videos on YouTube, so you can go subscribe to my channel there. I've got hundreds of blogs. You can go and just read them. You don't need to subscribe. You can follow me all over social media. I'm on Instagram, Threads, Blue Sky. I've got a Facebook fan page for the podcast. I sometimes do TikTok videos, but there's no dancing or foolishness like that. It's centered around the podcast or it's scenes from Cape Cod. Special birthday shout out a few days early to my friend and Patreon subscriber, Crystal. Truly one of my favorite people in the world. She's family. She's always supportive of me and my work, which is really so helpful on the days when I'm doing so much work and I'm wondering if it's making a difference. To have people that are in your corner and supportive, it really does a lot. Next week on the podcast, you will get the time capsule section, your birth date, so you'll get to know everything that was going on. And speaking of that, next week is episode 186. We're going to be looking at just what in the world a B-movie is, kind of an overview. We're going to have a new dedication to the craft segment, photography segment, a famous trip to Nantucket with my buddy Steve. Lots of fun and laughs there. And there'll be a brand new top five that are the quintessential 80s songs. Like these songs or videos, when you see them, it screams 80s to you. So all that's coming up next week on episode 186 of the podcast. Now we're into March. We're getting closer to spring. Hopefully the weather's going to start to warm up some. Things will start to bloom. So make sure you take advantage of that. Get outside. Enjoy that vitamin D. As it's warmer, you can go further away. Go further into the woods or down the beach to just get into your own head. Solitude. Enjoy yourself. That's one of my favorite things to do. Go and get lost and just enjoy what's out there. And you can always take this podcast with you. I try to make it, you know, less than an hour. Perfect time for a walk. Fill your day with nostalgia, the good old days. I feel like a fine connoisseur of nostalgia. And I share it with all of you weekly, hoping that if you need an escape for a little while, you get it. And remember... In this life, don't walk in anyone else's footsteps. Create your own path and enjoy every moment you can on this journey we call life because you never know what tomorrow brings. Thank you all again for tuning in. This has been the In My Footsteps podcast. I am Christopher Setterlund, but you already knew that. And I'll talk to you all again soon.

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Christopher Setterlund

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