Commercialized dog food as we know it today is a fairly recent phenomenon: when it was first made available for sale in the US in the 1870s, it was not only expensive but primarily marketed to elite dog breeders and sportsmen. American families were used to making their own “dog stew” out of their own scraps, so it wasn’t until the growing concern with nutrition during the early part of the twentieth century that dog food began to appear on every pet owner’s shopping list.
Marketed as the “seven-course meal in a can,” Ideal Dog Food was introduced by Wilson & Co of Chicago in the 1930s, a product of one of the many meat-packing companies looking to capitalize on the leftover meat scraps and bone not suitable for human consumption. The company was known for its creative marketing campaigns, and in 1938 began offering a number of premiums in exchange for the cost of postage and a certain amount of labels from Ideal Dog Food cans. A small gift catalogue was published featuring the full range of premiums on offer: towels, toasters, full sets of cutlery, jewelry, fountain pens, and the popular Ideal refrigerator dish (for storing and chilling the unfed portion of Ideal Dog Food) were just some of the items available for the right number of labels. One such premium was this 4-in-1 hammer multitool. For two dog food labels and 50 cents, one could receive ‘the most useful tool you have ever seen,’ a hammer that comes apart to reveal four different-sized screwdrivers.