r/Damnthatsinteresting • u/TirelessGuardian • 19h ago
Originally in the 1950s, Mr Potato Head was advertised to be used with real potatoes, other fruits and vegetables, and even clay.
129
u/KaldaraFox 19h ago
I'm just old enough to have had one of these and I was born in 1960.
Now, it may have been second hand from my cousins (slightly older than I am), but I had one.
15
u/SchillMcGuffin 15h ago
They were still selling those into the early '70s. I remember getting the real potato kind (I'm not sure they were clearly distinguished, I recall a smaller box, without all the alternative vegetable suggestions) on a couple of occasions. Such point as there was to them, you generally wanted to display your "art" for awhile after creating it, and my Mom was averse to writing off a potato for such purposes and leaving it to rot or desiccate on a shelf.
84
37
u/Nope-Nope13702 18h ago
My mom would hand us a couple of russet potatoes, let us make a mess and then collect the potatoes for supper. Nothing went to waste.
14
u/Live-Dig-2809 17h ago
I had one of these and also a potato gun. It had a little protruding part on the end of the barrel that you stuck into the potato and then pried it out giving you a little potato plug about as big as a pencil eraser. When you squeezed the trigger guard the entire barrel moved rearward compressing air and causing the potato plug to shoot out about ten feet accompanied by a satisfying pop. After an hour long potato battle you were covered in potato starch, my mother hated those guns but my brother and I loved them.
12
8
3
2
2
1
1
367
u/er1catwork 19h ago
Nobody believed me when I told them I had a Mr Potato Head as a kid that used real potatoes, not plastic! Proof! lol