The Market Report

 I think I've mentioned that I spend about half my time in northern New Jersey and the other half in Worcester, Massachusetts. Well, my Bay State companions are known for pronouncing things in a very specific way (as are my Garden State companions, of course). And the DeMoulas chain of supermarkets from northeastern Mass is, in local dialect, pronounced Mahket Bayaskit. Worcester? Wista. Leicester? Lesta. Oxford? Oxfid. Haverhill? Hayvrll. I could go on, but we'll see more of that when we're up in Mass. I estimate this clip, which is part of my collection, is from the 90s. And this toy truck most certainly is, pictured outside of the Oxfid Mahket Bayaskit (which is, of course, the Market Basket supermarket in Oxford, Mass, just south of Worcester). This is not particularly relevant, but I feel obliged to mention that I write these memorabilia posts while watching a livestream of a concert from Indianapolis in a snowstorm in Massachusetts. I said this on the Streetside Sight...

A few shots of assorted ACME Ideal coffee cans I've found in my travels. Again, unfortunately, none of these are actually in my collection. Can we take a second to appreciate something I've never noticed before, which is that the middle bar of the E in IDEAL is the same shape as the ACME logo?! Am I just slow to pick up on that? Have others noticed that? Some of these coffee cans have been preserved beautifully, and others have been put to other uses... If I'm not mistaken, that first and last one was taken in the basement of an antique store in Andover, NJ. The middle one was spotted at an antique mall outside of Allentown, PA.

Now the matchbooks are all in my collection, but I have plenty more photos that were spotted in an antique store, or flea market, or so on, that are out of my price range or possibly just too large, or so on. Here's a few shots of coffee cans I spotted out in the field. Red Circle, of course, was one of the A&P private labels along with Bokar and the most famous, Eight O'Clock Coffee. And if A&P tried hard to build a strong brand for their coffee lines, with refined, simple, and elegant package designs, there's always someone going in the other direction... ...which is, of course, ShopRite, who put out this can of COFFEE . (Disappointing, Blogger didn't make that as large as I wanted. But you sure can't miss this package from anywhere!) And here's a scan of the front of a box of 1990s-era ShopRite coffee filters which is, actually, part of my collection. Well, kind of -- I have only the front and back panels of the box, if I'm not mistaken; I don...

Happy spring from Shurfine! This Spring Sale-A-Bration matchbook is a little newer than the Shurfine matchbooks I showed yesterday, with the newer logo which was used up until recently (and is still used by Shur-Save). I've mentioned that some of these matchbooks traveled quite the distance to arrive in an antique store in small-town Maine, but this one would not have had to go far at all. I unfortunately don't know where this grocery store would've been along Stone Street, since so much of that area has seen such significant development recently. But someday, when we get through the rest of New England, we will be visiting Maine! And how about this one... I had never seen this logo for Stop & Shop previously! Unfortunately, other than the name and logo, there's not much else as far as historical information goes. And moving slightly south from Maine, we enter East Pepperell, a beautiful small town (well, it's part of Pepperell) in northern Massachusetts right n...

 Possibly the less-famous band led by Tom Robert? Okay, let's get into our third day of matchbooks with this specimen from the defunct southeastern chain . Again, it would be fascinating to know how this St Louis/New Orleans-area chain's matchbook ended up in Maine. Of course, their reach was much wider than that (check out that Wikipedia article for more details), but it's not a chain I'm familiar with. In fact, since it was related to the Loblaw's chain up north, any chance this might have been given out -- maybe even accidentally -- at a Loblaw's? Not too much to see here as far as design goes, just the logo (which is a creative inversion of the Loblaw's L). Heading into more familiar territory, we check out the Providence Public Market Co., whose store would've been here (but of course has been demolished). Additional stores: 93 Weybosset , also apparently demolished; 1880 Westminster , same; 132 Taunton , probably in that brick building, which is p...

 Oh yes. It's four days of matches and four days of matching bad puns. Ha! Get it? Jell-O? Oh, no. This is IGA brand Jell-It! Just like grandma always made. Judging from the IGA logo used here, these are certainly from before 1976. And if IGA brand Jell-It isn't for you, maybe you want A Royal Feast of IGA brand canned whole chicken. I have never had a canned whole chicken in my life and I'm not sure I'm interested in trying it. Anyone here ever tried one? Sadly, it's basically impossible to tell what IGA store these were from since they could be from anywhere across New England where there were hundreds of IGA stores over many decades, and they don't have any store-specific information on them. Canned chicken for dinner, Jell-It for dessert, and maybe a cup of Royal Guest coffee to go along with it... So who makes these matches? Well, you might have noticed a few different names on the various packages, but it looks like one of them was from a familiar place......

 I know, I know. It's a lazy pun. But hey, it's spring break. And so I'm interrupting Spring Break to present a week of memorabilia, beginning with a collection of matchbook covers I bought at an antique store in Maine in the summer of 2019. We'll be spending the first four days of this week taking a look at matchbooks, then on to some other items I've found. Here's the first, from AG Stores (Associated Grocers of New England, I believe). AGNE still exists, although its presence is fairly small in New England. Other Associated cooperatives also exist across the country, although I'm not sure if there ever was any connection among them. I don't believe Associated Supermarket Group of New York (previously Associated Food Holdings) was ever affiliated with any of the other Associateds. Today, AGNE supports a variety of retailers from supermarkets to convenience stores. I get the feeling this was a rare find, since Clover Farm stores are of course long gone...

It's time for The Market Report's Spring Break, so we won't have any posts until we begin our next group on May 1. Be sure to come back then to move on to our next state! In the meantime, don't forget to check out yesterday's Streetside Sights & Scenes here , and we'll have memorabilia on Grocery Archaeology 4/17-4/23! We also have a few updates and special reports, so make sure to check them all out here! Update: Foodtown - Caldwell, NJ Update: SuperFresh - Roselle, NJ Special Report: Uncle Giuseppe's Marketplace - Morris Plains, NJ Update: ACME Markets (former) - Morris Plains, NJ Update: ACME Markets (former) - Middlesex, NJ