Aeroplane Jelly
Encyclopedia
Aeroplane Jelly is a jelly
brand in Australia
created by Bert Appleroth. Appleroth's backyard business, Traders Pty Ltd, became one of Australia's largest family-operated food manufacturers and was sold to McCormick Foods Australia, a subsidiary of United States
corporation McCormick & Company
, in 1995. Aeroplane Jelly is the market leader in Australia's jelly market, with over 18 million packets sold annually. Raspberry is the best-selling flavour.
Aeroplane Jelly ran a successful advertising campaign featuring a jingle
that has become part of Australian culture. It is one of Australia's longest running jingles, and was played on radio over 100 times per day in the 1940s. The jingle was added to the National Film and Sound Archive
's Sounds of Australia registry in June 2008..
conductor
who created jelly crystals using gelatine and sugar in his bathtub. He sold these jelly crystals door-to-door, using his tram route to transport him around Sydney. In 1917, Appleroth rented premises to manufacture his jelly, then formed a company with Albert Francis Lenertz named Traders Ltd in 1926. Planes were considered new and exciting at the time, so aviation fan Appleroth named the brand Aeroplane Jelly. Appleroth used a Tiger Moth
plane to make deliveries to rural areas in 1934, and his publicity stunts and Aeroplane Jelly's advertising campaigns made the jelly a national icon, like Holden
and Vegemite
.
Appleroth's company, Traders Pty Ltd, was run by his son, Bert II, then grandson, Bert III, and ownership passed to Bert III's wife Val when he died in 1985. According to Traders' managing director, Hugh Knox, the Appleroth family were friends with a former managing director of McCormick & Company
, which opened up negotiations between the parties. Aeroplane Jelly was sold to McCormick Foods Australia in 1995, the Australia
n subsidiary of the United States
-based McCormick & Company
.
The first Aeroplane Jelly factory was located in Paddington, New South Wales
, a suburb of Sydney
, then manufactured in West Ryde
for 33 years. In 2006, McCormick Foods Australia moved production of Aeroplane Jelly to Clayton, Victoria
to centralise its manufacturing operations in Victoria.
actress Peggy Thorne, pianist of the Musician's Lodge, Les Woods, and New Zealand
er Bill White.
The jingle was first sung in the early 1930s on the Goodie Reeve radio show by three-year-old Jennifer Paykel. As the commercials were broadcast live, Paykel was taken to the studio two or three times per week to sing the jingle. Paykel's mother did not renew her contract because, according to Paykel, "Shirley Temple
was all the rage and my mother was terrified I might become a public figure like her". Aeroplane Jelly held a talent quest in Sydney to find a new singer and the competition was won by five-year-old Joy King. King recorded the jingle in 1937 with the lyrics below, which became the most widely known version.
A finalist in the same talent quest was seven-year-old Tommy Dawes, who Appleroth chose to appear as the "whistling boy" on the front of the jelly packets and advertising. According to Dawes, as a finalist he received 10 guineas
and an onyx inkstand
, but has received no other compensation for the use of his image or his recorded version of the jingle. Dawes said, "It was absolutely fantastic; I loved seeing my picture and singing the song and all my friends were very impressed... I have never wanted any money from it... I just like telling everyone that I'm the Aeroplane Jelly boy."
In 1966, the jingle was recorded in Greek
, Italian
, Russian
and Yugoslav
, and became one of Australia's first advertising campaigns to target ethnic groups. Versions of the jingle have been recorded by The Andrews Sisters
and Victor Borge
. At its peak in the 1940s, the jingle was played over 100 times per day on radio stations, and it is one of the longest-running jingles in Australia. In 2003, Aeroplane Jelly marked its 75th anniversary with a national competition to record a new version of the jingle and raise money for the Starlight Children's Foundation. A McCormick spokesperson described the number of submissions as "overwhelming". The competition was won by Queensland's Palm Beach State School, who re-recorded the jingle with runners-up Park Ridge Primary School from Victoria.
Brisbane advertising agencies named the Aeroplane Jelly jingle one of the best and most recognisable advertisement catchphrases of the past 40 years, a runner-up to Mortein
's "Louie the Fly" jingle. In June 2008, Joy King's recording of the jingle was added to the National Film and Sound Archive
's Sounds of Australia registry.
Bertie the Aeroplane was introduced as Aeroplane Jelly's mascot in 1942. Named after Bert Appleroth, Bertie sung the jingle in cinema advertising. Bertie was later featured in television advertisements and reappeared in 1996 on jelly packaging and the Aeroplane Jelly website.
A parody of the jingle has been made:
This, together with the fact that Aeroplane Jelly no longer uses real fruit, is probably why the song has been shortened in advertising to:
, jelly was available in special Australian flavours such as Lilly Pilly, Quandong
and Midjinberry
. These flavours were phased out by 1992.
Gelatin dessert
Gelatin desserts are desserts made with sweetened and flavored gelatin. They can be made by combining plain gelatin with other ingredients or by using a premixed blend of gelatin with additives...
brand in Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
created by Bert Appleroth. Appleroth's backyard business, Traders Pty Ltd, became one of Australia's largest family-operated food manufacturers and was sold to McCormick Foods Australia, a subsidiary of United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
corporation McCormick & Company
McCormick & Company
McCormick & Company manufactures spices, herbs, and flavorings for retail, commercial, and industrial markets. The company began in 1889 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. One hundred years later, McCormick moved from downtown Baltimore to the suburb of Hunt Valley, Maryland. McCormick has...
, in 1995. Aeroplane Jelly is the market leader in Australia's jelly market, with over 18 million packets sold annually. Raspberry is the best-selling flavour.
Aeroplane Jelly ran a successful advertising campaign featuring a jingle
Jingle
A jingle is a short tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses. The jingle contains one or more hooks and lyrics that explicitly promote the product being advertised, usually through the use of one or more advertising slogans. Ad buyers use jingles in radio and television...
that has become part of Australian culture. It is one of Australia's longest running jingles, and was played on radio over 100 times per day in the 1940s. The jingle was added to the National Film and Sound Archive
National Film and Sound Archive
The National Film and Sound Archive is Australia’s audiovisual archive, responsible for developing, preserving, maintaining, promoting and providing access to a national collection of audiovisual materials and related items...
's Sounds of Australia registry in June 2008..
History
Adolphus Herbert Frederick Norman Appleroth, known as Bert Appleroth, was a tramTram
A tram is a passenger rail vehicle which runs on tracks along public urban streets and also sometimes on separate rights of way. It may also run between cities and/or towns , and/or partially grade separated even in the cities...
conductor
Conductor (transportation)
A conductor is a member of a railway train's crew that is responsible for operational and safety duties that do not involve the actual operation of the train. The title of conductor is most associated with railway operations in North America, but the role of conductor is common to railways...
who created jelly crystals using gelatine and sugar in his bathtub. He sold these jelly crystals door-to-door, using his tram route to transport him around Sydney. In 1917, Appleroth rented premises to manufacture his jelly, then formed a company with Albert Francis Lenertz named Traders Ltd in 1926. Planes were considered new and exciting at the time, so aviation fan Appleroth named the brand Aeroplane Jelly. Appleroth used a Tiger Moth
Tiger moth
Tiger moths are moths of the family Arctiidae.Tiger moth may also refer to:*de Havilland Tiger Moth, an aircraft; an aerobatic and trainer tailwheel biplane*de Havilland DH.71 Tiger Moth, an earlier monoplane produced by de Havilland...
plane to make deliveries to rural areas in 1934, and his publicity stunts and Aeroplane Jelly's advertising campaigns made the jelly a national icon, like Holden
Holden
GM Holden Ltd is an automaker that operates in Australia, based in Port Melbourne, Victoria. The company was founded in 1856 as a saddlery manufacturer. In 1908 it moved into the automotive field, before becoming a subsidiary of the U.S.-based General Motors in 1931...
and Vegemite
Vegemite
Vegemite is a dark brown Australian food paste made from yeast extract. It is a spread for sandwiches, toast, crumpets and cracker biscuits, and filling for pastries...
.
Appleroth's company, Traders Pty Ltd, was run by his son, Bert II, then grandson, Bert III, and ownership passed to Bert III's wife Val when he died in 1985. According to Traders' managing director, Hugh Knox, the Appleroth family were friends with a former managing director of McCormick & Company
McCormick & Company
McCormick & Company manufactures spices, herbs, and flavorings for retail, commercial, and industrial markets. The company began in 1889 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. One hundred years later, McCormick moved from downtown Baltimore to the suburb of Hunt Valley, Maryland. McCormick has...
, which opened up negotiations between the parties. Aeroplane Jelly was sold to McCormick Foods Australia in 1995, the Australia
Australia
Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...
n subsidiary of the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
-based McCormick & Company
McCormick & Company
McCormick & Company manufactures spices, herbs, and flavorings for retail, commercial, and industrial markets. The company began in 1889 in Baltimore, Maryland, United States. One hundred years later, McCormick moved from downtown Baltimore to the suburb of Hunt Valley, Maryland. McCormick has...
.
The first Aeroplane Jelly factory was located in Paddington, New South Wales
Paddington, New South Wales
Paddington is an inner-city, eastern suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. Paddington is located 3 kilometres east of the Sydney central business district and lies across the local government areas of the City of Sydney and the Municipality of Woollahra...
, a suburb of Sydney
Sydney
Sydney is the most populous city in Australia and the state capital of New South Wales. Sydney is located on Australia's south-east coast of the Tasman Sea. As of June 2010, the greater metropolitan area had an approximate population of 4.6 million people...
, then manufactured in West Ryde
West Ryde, New South Wales
West Ryde is a suburb of Sydney, in the state of New South Wales, Australia. West Ryde is located 16 kilometres north-west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Ryde and is part of the Northern Suburbs area....
for 33 years. In 2006, McCormick Foods Australia moved production of Aeroplane Jelly to Clayton, Victoria
Clayton, Victoria
Clayton is a suburb in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, 19 km south-east from Melbourne's central business district. Its Local Government Area is the City of Monash. At the 2006 Census, Clayton had a population of 14,332.-Overview:...
to centralise its manufacturing operations in Victoria.
Advertising
The Aeroplane Jelly jingle was composed by Albert Francis Lenertz (1891–1943), Appleroth's business partner. The jingle was a re-working of Lenertz's earlier political jingle in tribute to Australian Prime Minister William Morris Hughes. A minor controversy occurred in the Sydney Morning Herald in 1988 over authorship of the song, with claims made on behalf of vaudevilleVaudeville
Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...
actress Peggy Thorne, pianist of the Musician's Lodge, Les Woods, and New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
er Bill White.
Shirley Temple
Shirley Temple Black , born Shirley Jane Temple, is an American film and television actress, singer, dancer, autobiographer, and former U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia...
was all the rage and my mother was terrified I might become a public figure like her". Aeroplane Jelly held a talent quest in Sydney to find a new singer and the competition was won by five-year-old Joy King. King recorded the jingle in 1937 with the lyrics below, which became the most widely known version.
I like Aeroplane Jelly, Aeroplane Jelly for me.
I like it for dinner, I like it for tea,
A little each day is a good recipe!
The quality's high, as the name will imply,
It's made from pure fruit - one more good reason why
I like Aeroplane Jelly, Aeroplane Jelly for me!
A finalist in the same talent quest was seven-year-old Tommy Dawes, who Appleroth chose to appear as the "whistling boy" on the front of the jelly packets and advertising. According to Dawes, as a finalist he received 10 guineas
Guinea (British coin)
The guinea is a coin that was minted in the Kingdom of England and later in the Kingdom of Great Britain and the United Kingdom between 1663 and 1813...
and an onyx inkstand
Inkstand
An inkstand is a stand or tray used to house writing instruments, with a tightly-capped inkwell and a sand shaker for rapid drying. A penwiper would often be included, and from the mid-nineteenth century, a compartment for steel nibs, which replaced quill pens...
, but has received no other compensation for the use of his image or his recorded version of the jingle. Dawes said, "It was absolutely fantastic; I loved seeing my picture and singing the song and all my friends were very impressed... I have never wanted any money from it... I just like telling everyone that I'm the Aeroplane Jelly boy."
In 1966, the jingle was recorded in Greek
Modern Greek
Modern Greek refers to the varieties of the Greek language spoken in the modern era. The beginning of the "modern" period of the language is often symbolically assigned to the fall of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, even though that date marks no clear linguistic boundary and many characteristic...
, Italian
Italian language
Italian is a Romance language spoken mainly in Europe: Italy, Switzerland, San Marino, Vatican City, by minorities in Malta, Monaco, Croatia, Slovenia, France, Libya, Eritrea, and Somalia, and by immigrant communities in the Americas and Australia...
, Russian
Russian language
Russian is a Slavic language used primarily in Russia, Belarus, Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. It is an unofficial but widely spoken language in Ukraine, Moldova, Latvia, Turkmenistan and Estonia and, to a lesser extent, the other countries that were once constituent republics...
and Yugoslav
Serbo-Croatian language
Serbo-Croatian or Serbo-Croat, less commonly Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian , is a South Slavic language with multiple standards and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Montenegro...
, and became one of Australia's first advertising campaigns to target ethnic groups. Versions of the jingle have been recorded by The Andrews Sisters
The Andrews Sisters
The Andrews Sisters were a highly successful close harmony singing group of the swing and boogie-woogie eras. The group consisted of three sisters: contralto LaVerne Sophia Andrews , soprano Maxene Angelyn Andrews , and mezzo-soprano Patricia Marie "Patty" Andrews...
and Victor Borge
Victor Borge
Victor Borge ,born Børge Rosenbaum, was a Danish comedian, conductor and pianist, affectionately known as The Clown Prince of Denmark,The Unmelancholy Dane,and The Great Dane.-Early life and career:...
. At its peak in the 1940s, the jingle was played over 100 times per day on radio stations, and it is one of the longest-running jingles in Australia. In 2003, Aeroplane Jelly marked its 75th anniversary with a national competition to record a new version of the jingle and raise money for the Starlight Children's Foundation. A McCormick spokesperson described the number of submissions as "overwhelming". The competition was won by Queensland's Palm Beach State School, who re-recorded the jingle with runners-up Park Ridge Primary School from Victoria.
Brisbane advertising agencies named the Aeroplane Jelly jingle one of the best and most recognisable advertisement catchphrases of the past 40 years, a runner-up to Mortein
Mortein
Mortein is an Australian brand of household insecticide. Together with its sister product Aerogard, a popular insect repellent, Mortein has become something of a household name in Australia, owing much in this regard to its cartoon antagonist, Louie the Fly. Louie was drawn and animated by Geoffry...
's "Louie the Fly" jingle. In June 2008, Joy King's recording of the jingle was added to the National Film and Sound Archive
National Film and Sound Archive
The National Film and Sound Archive is Australia’s audiovisual archive, responsible for developing, preserving, maintaining, promoting and providing access to a national collection of audiovisual materials and related items...
's Sounds of Australia registry.
Bertie the Aeroplane was introduced as Aeroplane Jelly's mascot in 1942. Named after Bert Appleroth, Bertie sung the jingle in cinema advertising. Bertie was later featured in television advertisements and reappeared in 1996 on jelly packaging and the Aeroplane Jelly website.
A parody of the jingle has been made:
I like Aeroplane Jelly, Aeroplane Jelly for me.
I like it for dinner, I like it for tea,
A little each day is a good recipe!
The quality's high, as the name will imply,
It's made from pure fruit - what a big fat lie
I like Aeroplane Jelly, Aeroplane Jelly for me!
This, together with the fact that Aeroplane Jelly no longer uses real fruit, is probably why the song has been shortened in advertising to:
I like Aeroplane Jelly, Aeroplane Jelly for me.
I like it for dinner, I like it for tea,
A little each day is a good recipe!
I like Aeroplane Jelly, Aeroplane Jelly for me!
Products
The Australian jelly industry is worth approximately $21 million per annum, and Aeroplane Jelly is the market leader with a 25% share. Over 19 million packets of Aeroplane Jelly are sold each year. Regular Raspberry flavour is the top selling Jelly variant with nearly 2 million packs sold each year. In 1953, Aeroplane Jelly introduced Australia's first low calorie jelly. In 1988, in honour of the Australian BicentenaryAustralian Bicentenary
The bicentenary of Australia was celebrated in 1970 on the 200th anniversary of Captain James Cook landing and claiming the land, and again in 1988 to celebrate 200 years of permanent European settlement.-1970:...
, jelly was available in special Australian flavours such as Lilly Pilly, Quandong
Quandong
Quandong, quandang or quondong, is a common name for the species Santalum acuminatum , especially its edible fruit, but may also refer to* Aceratium concinnum...
and Midjinberry
Austromyrtus dulcis
Midgen Berry, Midyim, or Austromyrtus dulcis is a spreading heathland shrub native to eastern Australia.Midgen berry leaves are 1-3 cm long and 0.5 cm wide, lanceolate to elliptical, glossy above and silky hairy beneath...
. These flavours were phased out by 1992.