The pictures show views of this 1955 Kellogg's Sugar Smacks Cereal Box Front With Old Time Gun Model Kit Premium Offer & Bonus Painting. The first picture shows the front panel of this 9 ounce cereal box. The second picture shows the back of this cardboard panel. We had acquired six different old cereal box front panels with this Artist's paintings. This is one of them. This is a very interesting, signed, dated, painting on a classic and nostalgic Kellogg's cereal advertising box for children. There is just so much that can be said about this item. This is ONLY the front panel of the cereal box. There is the great colorful illustrated advertising image with the famous Ringling Bros., Barnum & Bailey Circus Clown Paul Jung with falling cereal pieces. (see more information below) There is advertising for Old Time Gun plastic model kit mail away premium. There were four different gun model kits that were offered on other specially marked Kellogg's cereal boxes. These included the Colt Peacemaker, the Derringer (seen on this box), the Pepper Box, and the Militia Pistol. This is the advertising on the store shelf that a child would have seen. If you are reading this perhaps you were that child back then. There is a signed and dated unusual original painting on the back (box inside). The painting is of the American Figure Ice Skater ''Betty Schulow''. The painting was created on July 2nd, 1955 by Francis Tierney. A One of a Kind piece from 1955. This cereal box front panel is marked on the two sides as follows: KELLOGG'S SUGAR SMACKS SUGAR - TOASTED PUFFS OF WHEAT LARGE SIZE SEE SPECIAL OFFER ON PACKAGE BACK! YOU CAN MAKE THIS OLD TIME GUN 4 DIFFERENT MODEL KITS ALL GUNS FULL SIZE! PAUL JUNG RINGLING BROS AND BARNUM & BAILEY CIRCUS CLOWN KEPT OVEN FRESH IN ALUMINUM KEEPS SUGAR SMACKS FRESH AND CRISP UP TO 10 TIMES LONGER QUALITY PROTECTED WITH REYNOLDS WRAP ALUMINUM PACKAGING NET WT. 9 OZ. BETTY SCHULOW A DREAM COMES TRUE DREAMY GIRL FRANCIS L. TIERNEY JULY 2, 1955 This cereal box panel measures 7-1/4'' x 9-1/2''. It appears to be in very excellent condition with as pictured. Below here, for reference, is a short history on the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Clown Paul Jung, who is pictured on the front: Paul Jung Clown By Dominique Jando Circopedia - The Free Encyclopedia of The International Circus Paul Jung (1900 - 1965) is perhaps one of the world's most recognizable clowns (albeit as an anonymous face), coming second only after his famous Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey colleague, Lou Jacobs. During and after Jung's lifetime, his distinctive, happy clown persona appeared on many commercial ads, most notably on the boxes of Kellogg’s Sugar Smacks, and has been often used on European circus posters as a generic clown image. Paul Jung was born March 18, 1900 in Dayton, Ohio, the son of Paul and Mary Young, who were already in show business. Young Paul debuted on stage at age eight, performing an acrobatic dancing act with his brother on the vaudeville circuit. He joined the Ringling Bros. Circus in 1917, when he was seveteen years old, working there as an acrobat, and he remained with the show when the Ringling brothers combined it with the Ringling-owned Barnum & Bailey Circus the following year. He would be working for the Ringling organization, with The Greatest Show On Earth and other Ringling owned circuses, for nearly half a century. It has been said that Paul Jung began performing as a clown in 1935, but his draft card, issued in 1918, gives his occupation as ''Clown'' and his employer as Barnum & Bailey Circus. So he actually started clowning at eighteen, a very young age, but he had good role models in The Greatest Show On Earth's Clown Alley, and in time would work alongside Lou Jacobs and Felix Adler, whose faces and silhouettes were already becoming icons of American clowning. Lou Jacobs may have inspired the highly imaginative Paul Jung with creating props and accessories, which would eventually lead him to becoming producing clown for the Ringling show. Jung met his wife, Elsie, an equestrian and aerialist, while working with the Ringling owned Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus in 1943. When not on the road, Paul and Elsie settled in Tampa, Florida, where Jung established his ''Laugh Factory'', in which he built props for the Ringling productions and for other circuses and ice shows. Some of the clown gags and props he imagined and built in his ''factory'' became classics of American clowning, such as The Adam Smasher (a machine that transformed a giant clown into several identical midget clowns…), the steam roller that flattens clowns, and Fireman, Save My Baby!, immortalized by Walt Disney in his animated feature, Dumbo. A tragic Ending Toward the end of his career, Paul Jung spent more time backstage than in the ring, supervising the clowns and preparing for them his sometimes gigantic props. He was a very discreet person, highly regarded and well loved in the circus community. Yet his life ended in tragedy. On April 21, 1965, during Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey’s engagement at Madison Square Garden in New York, Paul Jung was found murdered in his hotel room, his hands tied behind his back. There was no apparent motive for the murder, which puzzled his circus colleagues as much as it saddened them. A few weeks later, the Police arrested a suspect, a drug addict who was eventually convicted of the murder. Sadly, this was the only time Paul Jung made the newspapers' headlines; if his face was familiar to millions, his name, like that of most of the American clowns of the period, was by and large unknown. He is nonetheless well remembered by circus folks and circus enthusiasts, and his clown image has inspired many artists, even long after his death. His widow, Elsie, kept the ''Laugh Factory'' alive well into the 1970s, renting its vast collection of props to various shows. In 1992, Paul Jung was inducted into the International Clown Hall of Fame in Baraboo, Wisconsin, which is fittingly located in the vicinity of the old Ringling Bros. Circus’s winter quarters (today the Circus World museum), where Paul began his circus career. |