Jell-O Coin-a-Rama

(Only in Canada, eh!)

On this page I fondly remember Jell-O® "Car Wheels" and "Airplane Wheels" - two collectible sets of plastic coins: one series of 200 automobiles and another series of 200 aircraft that came free inside boxes of Jell-O and other General Foods products in the last years of the Red Ensign and the Original Six NHL.  As far as I know, these coins were available only in Canada - and they've got the bilingual text to prove it :)  I am not sure of the exact dates that they were available.  I know I was saving them as a pre-schooler in 1963-64, but by the time I was a second-grader singing Bobby Gimby's "CA-NA-DA" and watching the Leafs beat the Canadiens for their last Stanley Cup, General Foods had stopped offering them for quite some time.  However, circa 1967, Shirriff - one of General Foods' gelatin dessert competitors - was offering hockey coins.  I collected a few of these.  Here's Dave Keon wearing the "A" on his Toronto Maple Leafs jersey, before inheriting the captain's "C" from George Armstrong.

Of course, these coins were very popular with young boys.  Perhaps even more popular than hockey and baseball cards, or Shirriff's hockey coins.
MEMO TO PARENTS OF TODDLERS: If your little boy is not fascinated by cars, trucks, planes, trains, or anything with wheels and/or wings, take him to a mental health professional immediately.  That kid ain't normal!! :)

The coins were colour-coded in groups of 25, by year of manufacture or by aircraft type.  The reverse of the coins featured a tire or propeller design, with a raised knob or hub at the centre, allowing them to be placed on a flat surface and spun around. Groovy!!
 

Number	Date	Colour
1-25	1769-1899	purple
26-50	1900-1909	dark blue
51-75	1910-1919	red
76-100	1920-1929	black
101-125	1930-1939	gold
126-150	1940-1949	green
151-175	1950-1959	off-white
176-200	1960-1961	brown

   
 

Number	Type of aircraft	Colour
1-25	Pioneers	white
26-50	Fighters	red
51-75	Bombers	black
76-100	Transports	light blue
101-125	Airliners	silver
126-150	Bushplanes	green
151-175	Trainers	gold
176-200	Others	orange

I never collected anything close to the full set of 400.  But here are a few of my favourites from my collection:

The "is it coming or going?" Studebaker, designed by Raymond Loewy, turned a lot of heads in its day.  The 1947 Studebaker was touted as "First by far with a postwar car" at a time when all the other automakers were still offering warmed-over pre-war 1941 or '42 models.

 

For a short time in the late 1950s, the Avro Arrow was the pride of Canada's aviation industry and the most advanced jet fighter to ever fly.  I don't think I will ever forgive Diefenbaker for cancelling the Arrow project under pressure from the U.S. and ordering the few Arrows that had been built to be broken up for scrap.

The Jell-O artist's conception of Yuri Gagarin's Vostok 1 spacecraft was an educated guess.  In that era of Cold War paranoia, no detailed pictures of Soviet space ships were officially released.

The Monarch was a Canadian-badged Mercury, built at the Oakville, ON Ford plant in the 1940s and 50s.  The coins illustrated some other made-in-Canada cars such as the McLaughlin-Buick and Ford Frontenac (a 1960 Falcon with a maple leaf stuck proudly in the grille).  For the G.I.'s returning home from World War II, the 1946 Lincoln Continental must have looked quite inviting.

When it came to World War II fighters and bombers, both Axis and Allied planes were featured.  You could imagine your trusty Mustangs and Flying Fortresses shooting down those nasty Japanese Zeros and German ME-109's.

On coin #178 is a very rare 1960 Edsel, without the infamous horse-collar front end.  Only a handful of '60 Edsels were produced before Ford pulled the plug on one of the last century's worst lemons in late 1959.  The last coin (#200) in the car series was the Volvo P-1800 - not the Volvo that I remember as the family car. (My folks owned a Volvo 122 sedan - after visiting San Francisco in 1968, they stuck some psychedelic flower-power stickers on it!)

Davis Elliott of Tiverton, NS sent a sampling of some of the coins in his collection - including two 1961-62 Shirriff hockey coins of the late Hall of Famers Tim Horton and Terry Sawchuk.

John Barger of Las Vegas (formerly of Alberta) sent in two PDF scans of some of the coins in his collection, including a dog coin, and a CFL coin of an unidentified Toronto Argonaut. View here, and here.

For, say 50 cents and a couple of Jell-O box tops (don't remember exactly how much it cost -- but postage in those days was only 5 cents!), you could get nifty little books with background information about each of the 200 cars or planes illustrated on the coins.  Here are the covers of the fact books, thanks to Brad Thickson of Medicine Hat, AB. (Click on pictures to view full size image)

 

General Foods also offered plastic coin holders for a buck or two.  I used to store my coins in a Seagrams Crown Royal bag.  Now they're kept in a metal Cuban cigar box. (thanks to my dad's former vices :)

There may be many 50-something Canadians who wish they'd saved their Jell-O coins or their mothers hadn't trashed them.
They go for five bucks U.S. each, or $125 U.S. for a full set of 200, available at Mike's General Store in Winnipeg.


 Restore the Red Ensign! Canada's True Flag!

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If you have some memories of collecting Jell-O coins, or would like to share some GIFs/JPEGs of coins from your collection, I'd like to hear from you:
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©2003-2011, Mike Brooker.  Updated Feb. 14, 2011.  Not tested on animals.  No electrons were harmed in the production of this page.