THE CAMPBELL SOUP KIDS were already a well-loved phenomenon in 1905 by the time Campbell Soup Company of Canada opened. The artist Grace Gebbie Wiederseim Drayton was hired to create the adorable chubby-faced boy and girl characters. They immediately became so famous as spokes-kids for the international soup company, their images are updated and used still today. The artist Barry Zaid remembers coming across a picture of the Soup Girl in his mother's photo albums from the 1920s. She had been cut out from the label of a can -- smiling, healthy, and happy. Perfectly energetic, charming, and delightful, her cheeks polished like apples, he immediately fell in love with her.
Fast forward to 2010 and Barry is walking into Marshalls where, right at the front door, he comes across a table full of Campbell Soup Girl cookies jars, all bursting with happiness to greet him. AND, they were only $12.99. Of course he had to have one.
Miss Campbells Soup was so cheerful and welcoming that Barry placed her on the middle of his stove top (he doesn't cook). She was the only object with red detailing in a kitchen filled with only blue-and-white objects. In other words, she was a stand out.
After a life of prominence at center stage in Barry kitchen, Miss Campbells Soup came to be emblematic of welcome, holding up her big red tomato in one hand. Then, one portentous Friday, the exterminator appeared. In preparation for having his apartment "tented", Barry had to face his past and clean out the entire kitchen. When his cat, Cheetah, spied an empty shelf, she lept into the air to reach it and, in the process, knocked over a can of Campbells Cream of Poblano Pepper Soup which came crashing down on poor Miss Campbells Soup's chef hat, smashing her to pieces.
The ray of sunshine behind this drear cloud is that her face remained unmarred and in tact. Barry pledges that she will resurrect in the form of some broken china object d'art.
Until then, Miss Campbell's Soup Girl, R.I.P.
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