This trade card, circa 1900, was one of thousands that were collected by the shoppers who purchased Lion Coffee.
Lion was one of the first firms that transformed how Americans purchased coffee – there have been other revolutionary coffee businesses and franchises extending to our own day..
Until the mid-19th century, most consumers had to buy “green” coffee beans that had been shipped in bulk containers.
Coffee lovers would have to pick out the best-looking beans in a barrel or case, and then roast them in a frying pan at home before grinding the bean for coffee.
This process was so accepted that the introduction of Lion’s “fancy-roasted” beans in 1864 came as a revelation.
By 1870, the carefully selected, blended, and roasted coffee beans were sealed in one-pound bags bearing the distinctive Lion – an early trademark.
Founded in Toledo, Lion Coffee achieved great success, but the best days for the company were still ahead.
In 1882, Lion Coffee became a part of the Woolson Spice Company and its founder, Alvin Woolson, was “a man possessed”.
(Woolson’s obituary suggests some of his boundless energy.)
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/99926216/alvin-mansfield-woolson
Woolson searched tirelessly for ways to promote the “Lion” brand.
In addition to adding trade cards to each package, Woolson began offering paper dolls and greeting cards.
The biggest success came with the introduction of mail-in offers by which an enormous variety of objects could be obtained with Lion’s wrappers – gadgets, ornaments, a bicycle, furniture, or accessories.
“Save the wrapper” and “cut out the Lion’s head” became popular slogans, and Lion’s Coffee became the second-largest coffee company in the world.
Here is the colorful and well-illustrated story of the Lion Coffee -from which I derived most of the detail in this postcard story:
https://www.lioncoffee.com/amazing-true-history-lion-coffee
The attached article does not note how advances in printing accelerated the proliferation of trade cards.
At the 1876 Centennial Celebration in Philadelphia, exhibits included new four-color printing presses.
These demonstrations of color printing were wildly-popular, and many businessmen saw the advantages for public advertising.
By 1890, it was unlikely that any citizen of the nation had not encountered dozens of colorful advertising cards.
After the US annexation of Hawaii, Lion Coffee began to use Hawaiian coffee – and the company acquired the Hawaiian Coffee Company in 1979 and moved the company headquarters to Honolulu in order to focus on American coffee.
Lion still sells premium coffee as the Lion Coffee-Hawaiian Coffee Company.
On the reverse of this card, there is a penciled inscription of “Nettie”.
I do not know if this was the original collector of the trade card or if it is the mark of a dealer in old paper.
I prefer to think that Nettie was a child who loved the colorful pictures she collected at the dawn of the 20th century.
