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  • 2021-03-15 (xsd:date)
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  • Was Richard Nixon the Original Gerber Baby? (en)
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  • One piece of totally inaccurate common knowledge that often gets mentioned on social media is that the 37th president of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, was the original Gerber Baby. This is not true. Nixon was not the original Gerber baby. For one, Nixon was born in 1913 and would have been about 15 years old when Dan Gerber, the owner of the Fremont Canning Company, launched a contest in the summer of 1928 to find the face of his new Gerber baby food campaign. Second, we have not been able to trace this claim back to any credible source. In fact, when we did attempt to track down the source of this rumor we ended up in an episode of the animated show Futurama. In the episode War is the H-Word from Nov. 2000, Fry the delivery boy and Bender the robot enlist in the military to get discounts on gum. When a war is declared, the pair get deployed under the leadership of Zapp Brannigan, a military officer voiced by Billy West. As their ship takes off, Brannigan tells the new recruits: War is the H-Word is available via Hulu. An unofficial copy of this scene can be glimpsed below: While we're not entirely certain that this claim originated with Futurama, this episode from 2000 is the earliest example we've been able to find. The claim that Nixon was the original Gerber baby can also be dismissed since the identity of this advertising icon is already known. According to the Gerber Products Company, the original logo was based on a drawing of Ann Turner Cook that was done by her neighbor Dorothy Hope Smith. Gerber writes on its website: People have been speculating about the identity of the original Gerber baby for years. We took a deeper look into the rumor that actor Humphrey Bogart made his public debut on a baby food package here. (en)
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