1970 “History of Aviation” (NAB-5)
Nabisco Foods, Welwyn Garden City, Herts, England

Series Title: History of Aviation
British Trade Index: NAB-5
Issued by: Nabisco Foods, Ltd.
Issued with: Nabisco Shredded Wheat
Country: Welwyn Garden City, Herts, England
Number of Cards: 10
Card Numbering: 1 to 10 on reverse side
Type of Card: Food Insert Card
Card Dimensions: 77.1 × 55.5 mm
Circa: 1970
Checklist: Download Checklist

A Little History About Nabisco Foods and “Shredded Wheat”

As with the Nabisco’s 1980 “Aces in Action” 5-card set, Nabisco’s earlier 1970 “History of Aviation” 10-card set was also issued by Nabisco Foods, Ltd., Welwyn Garden City, Herts, England as a promotion with their “Shredded Wheat” breakfast cereal. We believe that this 1970 “History of Aviation” 10-Card set was distributed as inserts into Nabisco’s “Shredded Wheat” cereal boxes. Unfortunately, at this date (9/9/2015), we have yet to see one of the cereal boxes for this promotion.

The shredded wheat product line started in the United States and eventually migrated to England in the following manner. Shredded wheat is a breakfast cereal made from whole wheat. As of January 2010, it was available in three sizes - bite sized (0¾ × 1 in), miniature (nearly half the size of the bite-sized pieces), and original. Both smaller sizes are available in a frosted variety, which has one side coated with sugar and usually gelatin. Some manufacturers have produced “filled” versions of the bite-size cereal containing a raisin at the centre, or apricot, blueberry, raspberry or cranberry filling.

In the United States, shredded wheat is most heavily advertised and marketed by Post Foods, which acquired the product in 1993 through its parent company, Kraft Foods, buying it from its long-time producer Nabisco. Kellogg’s sells eight varieties of miniature, or bite-sized, shredded wheat cereal. Natural and organic manufacturer Barbara’s Bakery makes an all-natural version of shredded wheat. In the United Kingdom, the Shredded Wheat brand is owned by Cereal Partners, a Nestlé/General Mills company, although there are many generic versions and variants by different names. It was first made in the United States in 1893, while UK production began in 1926.

Henry Perky invented shredded wheat cereal in Denver, Colorado, in 1890. Inspired by his observation of a dyspeptic diner blending wheat with cream, he developed a method of processing wheat into strips that were formed into pillow-like biscuits. The wheat is first cooked in water until its moisture content reaches about 50%. It is then tempered, allowing moisture to diffuse evenly into the grain. The grain then passes through a set of rollers with grooves in one side, yielding a web of shredded wheat strands. Many webs are stacked together, and this moist stack of strands is crimped at regular intervals to produce individual pieces of cereal with the strands attached at each end. These then go into an oven, where they are baked until their moisture content is reduced to 5%.

Perky first sold his shredded wheat cereal to vegetarian restaurants in 1892, distributing it from a factory in Niagara Falls, New York. A health-oriented publication, The Chicago Vegetarian, recommended the use of shredded wheat biscuits as soup croutons. At the same time, Perky leased cereal-manufacturing machines to bakers in Denver and Colorado Springs through his Cereal Machine Company and sold wheat processors.

One of his wheat-processor buyers, Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, admired Perky’s manufacturing process for his shredded wheat cereal. Kellogg declined to purchase Perky’s patent on it, however, considering it too weak in taste, “like eating a whisk broom.” However, after co-founding the Battle Creek Toasted Corn Flake Company — later the Kellogg Company cereal manufacturer — with his brother Will Keith Kellogg in 1906, John Kellogg observed the success of Perky’s product and offered to buy its patent from him, but at too low a price to pique Perky’s interest.

Premiering to the public at Chicago’s World Columbian Exposition in 1893, shredded wheat cereal was then manufactured by The Natural Food Company in Niagara Falls, New York in 1901. It became the Shredded Wheat Company in 1904. It was bought by Nabisco (National Biscuit Company) in December 1928.

United States production of Shredded Wheat moved to Naperville, Illinois in 1954, where it is still made. In 1993, Nabisco sold the brand to Kraft General Foods, but it was still under the Nabisco name until 1999, whereupon it was sold under the slogan “Nabisco brought to you by Post.”

Canadian production has been at Niagara Falls, Ontario, since 1904 due to nearby hydro-electric power. United States production is also at Niagara Falls, Ontario. Until recently, United States production took place in Niagara Falls, New York, but that factory was closed when production was consolidated on the Canadian side of the border.

In 1920, Henry Perky’s son, Scott Henry Perky, developed a round shredded wheat cereal, which he named Muffets. The Muffets Corporation was sold to the Quaker Oats Company in 1927. The cereal is still marketed in Canada as Muffets, but in the U.S. is now sold as Quaker Shredded Wheat.

In the United Kingdom, the original company opened a factory in Welwyn Garden City, Hertfordshire in 1926 at which time Welgar was its registered trade mark, which became part of Nabisco in 1928. The tall concrete cereal silos that form part of the factory are a local landmark and are listed structures. The first 18 storage units were completed in 1926 with a further 27 constructed in 1938, in both instances they were built by Peter Lind & Company of London who continue in business today. In 1988, Nabisco sold the UK site to Rank Hovis McDougall (who made own-label cereals for supermarkets), whose breakfast cereals division briefly became the Shredded Wheat Company. In 1990, RHM sold the site to Cereal Partners. Now, all Shredded Wheat is made at Staverton, Wiltshire near Bath, Somerset, as the Welwyn Garden City site was shut down in 2008. Also, “Bitesize”, “Fruitful” and “Honey Nut” Shredded Wheat are made in the UK.

Shredded Wheat has a particular place in UK popular culture due to a long-running television advertising campaign. The campaign in the 1970s featured Linda Hoyle, singing the lyrics: “There are two men in my life, to one I am a mother, to the other I’m a wife, and I give them both the best with natural Shredded Wheat.” The “Three Shredded Wheat” advertisement suggested that the cereal was so nourishing that it was impossible to eat three. Even a black hole was shown as exploding when the third biscuit was sucked into it. Phrases such as “I bet you can’t eat three” and “He must have eaten three” were in common use as humorous remarks in the 1970s and 1980s, with celebrities such as Brian Clough, Peter Shilton, Richard Kiel and Ian Botham all ‘unable&sdquo; to eat three. A later UK poster advertisement for Carling Black Label showed a bowl with four Shredded Wheat and the caption “I bet he drinks Carling Black Label.”

After Henry Perky died in 1908 and the patent on his Shredded Wheat biscuit expired in 1912, John Harvey Kellogg saw that as an opportunity for Kellogg’s to sell its own version of the product. Kellogg obtained a patent on the biscuit in 1915, and Kellogg’s Shredded Wheat was born. This provoked National Biscuit Company to sue Kellogg for trademark infringement, attempting to enjoin him from using Shredded Wheat as a trade name and from manufacturing the cereal in its pillow-shaped form. This series of litigations led to the United States Supreme Court case Kellogg Co. v. National Biscuit Co. in 1938. The Supreme Court ruled that shredded wheat was generic and not trademarkable; and that in any case, when the first patent for shredded wheat machinery expired in 1912, the right to apply the name “shredded wheat” to the product passed into the public domain along with that patent.

NAB-5 Overview

During 1970, Nabisco Foods issued a 10-card set of “History of Aviation” food insert trading cards that were issued with their Shredded Wheat breakfast cereal. The set features ten British significant aircraft. The aircraft span the timeframe ranging from the Sopwith “Pup” of World War I up through the Hawker-Siddeley “Harrier” of the 1970s. The cards measure 77.1 × 55.5 mm.

The fronts of the “History of Aviation” cards feature color photographs taken from the “HISTORY OF AVIATION,” that were published in weekly parts by New English Library starting in September 1970. The card fronts feature an in-flight aircraft photograph with the aircraft title in the LLHC directly beneath the photograph. A copyright line “HISTORY OF AVIATION” photograph appears on the opposite side in the LRHC. The photographs themselves do not contain any borderline, but are surrounded by an ample white border.

The backs of the cards contain a vertical stack of the following four different elements:(1) Located at the top of the card, a rectangular red box contains the length of the series, the card number, and the card title; (2) Directly beneath the red rectangular box is a descriptive text of the subject aircraft; (3) directly beneath that is a rectangular red-lined box containing advertising copy for the New English Library; and (4) the manufacturer is noted at the bottom of the card. Note: all of the printing on the backside of the guard is in red ink.

The following reference card shows the fronts and backs of a typical 1970 “History of Aviation” card. Click on the card images to reveal full-size computer enhanced 600-dpi images of the card.

Image-Guide

Checklist

References

1. Wikipedia: Shredded Wheat
2. John A. Shupek: Card images via the Skytamer Archive Digital Image Database.
3. Allison Piearce: 1980 Nabisco Aces in Action& Shredded Wheat cereal box image. Message to Skytamer Images. 3 July 2015. E-mail.

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