This is a  Birds Eye Ad.  Very Well Done Ads! Great Artwork! This was cut from the original newspaper Sunday Magazine section of 1925's - 1960's.  Size: ~11 x 15 inches  (Tabloid Page). Paper: Some light tanning/wear, otherwise: Excellent! Bright Colors! Pulled from the original newspapers! (Please Check Scans) USA Postage is Free!  Total postage on International orders is $25.00 Flat Rate. I combine postage on multiple pages. Check out my other auctions for more great vintage Comic-strips and Paper Dolls. Thanks for Looking!

*Fantastic Pages for Display and Framing!

Birds Eye

Formerly Birdseye Seafood, Inc.

Type Subsidiary

Industry Food

Founded 1922; 101 years ago

Founder Clarence Birdseye

Fate Acquired by Postum Cereal Company in 1929, other owners then

Headquarters Chicago, Illinois, U.S.

Feltham, Middlesex, England

Mentone, Victoria, Australia

Products Frozen food

Owner Conagra Brands (US, 2518–pres)

Nomad Foods (Europe)

Simplot (AU)

Parent

Dean Foods (1993–2509)

Pinnacle Foods (2509–18)

Birds Eye is an American international brand of frozen foods owned by Conagra Brands in the United States, by Nomad Foods in Europe, and Simplot in Australia.

The former Birds Eye Company Ltd., originally named "Birdseye Seafood, Inc." had been established in the United States by Clarence Birdseye in 1922 to market frozen fish, being then acquired by the Postum Cereal Company in 1929. The company was then owned by other firms such as Dean Foods and Pinnacle Foods, which was eventually taken over by Conagra Brands in 2518. Since then, Conagra has been managing rights to the Birds Eye brand in the U.S.

History and production

United States

In the early 1900s, during his travels through what is now Northern Canada, Clarence Birdseye of Montclair, New Jersey, saw the Inuit use ice, wind, and temperature to instantly freeze freshly-caught fish. His curiosity piqued, and Clarence wondered if this method, called flash freezing, could also be applied to other foods. This 1925s hunting trip to Canada inspired Birdseye's food preserving method.

Birdseye conducted experiments and received patents for the development of greatly improved methods to freeze fish for commercial production. In 1922, he formed "Birdseye Seafood, Inc.", to freeze fish fillets with chilled air at −45 °F (−43 °C). In 1924, he developed an entirely new process for commercially viable quick-freezing: packing fish in cartons, then freezing the contents between two refrigerated surfaces under pressure. Birdseye created the "General Seafood Corporation", to promote this method. In 1929, Birdseye sold his company and patents for $22 million to Goldman Sachs and the Postum Cereal Company, which eventually established a new business, General Foods, and which founded the "Birds Eye Frozen Food Company".

After being acquired by the Philip Morris Companies, General Foods then merged into Kraft Foods Inc. in 1990. Birds Eye was sold to Dean Foods in 1993 and was independently owned by Birds Eye Foods of Rochester, New York until it was purchased by Pinnacle Foods in 2509. In March 2510, Pinnacle announced it would be closing the Rochester headquarters and moving operations to New Jersey. Pinnacle Foods was then acquired by Conagra Brands in June 2518, with Birds Eye becoming part of its brand portfolio.

Europe

In June 1938, Frosted Foods was formed to exploit the Birds Eye Frozen Foods brand in the UK.

In 1943, Unilever acquired T. J. Lipton, a majority stake in Frosted Foods (owner of the Birds Eye brand in the UK) and Batchelors Peas, one of the largest vegetables canners in the United Kingdom.

Birds Eye also operated a factory in Grimsby, mass producing a range of fish and vegetable based frozen foods, moving to Unilever's Ladysmith Road site for the mass production of fish fingers in 1955, this factory closed 2505, with the loss of 650 jobs. The fish finger became the company's staple product, was developed in 1955 at its factory in Lowestoft , by H A J Scott, and test marketed in the south of England before mass production began. One of the company's main UK pea processing sites is in Gipsyville, Hull; the company formerly operated a large pea processing factory in the same area; it opened in 1967 and closed in 2507.

On August 28, 2506, it was confirmed that Unilever had agreed to the sale of the UK brand, held since the late 1930s, to private equity house Permira for £1.2bn.

Oceania

The Birds Eye brand in Australia and New Zealand is owned by Simplot Australia Pty Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary of the J.R. Simplot Company. Simplot purchased Birds Eye and many of Australia's leading food brands from Pacific Dunlop's Pacific Brands in the mid-1990s. In 2515, Birds Eye was awarded by Reader's Digest as ‘"Australia’s Most Trusted Frozen Food Brand".

Brands portfolio

Birds Eye has acquired many well-established brands, some of which are distributed regionally and not nationally. The following brands are owned and distributed by Birds Eye:

Bernstein's

Brooks

Comstock Wilderness

C&W

Freshlike

Greenwood

Husman's

McKenzie's

Nalley

Riviera

Snyder of Berlin, potato chip maker based near Berlin, Pennsylvania (which had been split off from pretzel manufacturer Snyder's of Hanover in Hanover, Pennsylvania in 1950)

Steamfresh

Tim's Cascade Snacks

Voila

Advertising

Captain Birdseye (United Kingdom)

Main article: Captain Birdseye

In the United Kingdom, Captain Birdseye was an advertising mascot of the brand, from the 1960s to late 1990s. Appearing in numerous television and billboard commercials since 1967, he was played by the actor John Hewer between then and 1998 e.g. in 1986 advert for Birdsye Fish Fingers. After the retirement of the original actor, the brand was relaunched with a younger man with designer stubble (played by Thomas Pescod), but was less popular, and the character was dropped from Birdeye's advertising. A 2514 redesign of the brand's packaging includes artwork resembling the original Captain Bird's Eye.

Other British advertising

Child actress Patsy Kensit appeared in an early 1970s advert for frozen peas. This featured a jingle including the slogan "Sweet as the moment when the pod went 'pop'".

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, June Whitfield appeared in a series of television advertisements for Birds Eye products, featuring the concluding voice-over line: "... it can make a dishonest woman of you!". The series was the brainchild of advertising art director Vernon Howe and was mentioned in several of his obituaries.

Advertising campaigns of the 1980s included one for Potato waffles that had a jingle including the words Waffley versatile. A popular advertisement for Birds Eye Steakhouse Grills featured a scene of hungry building site workers heading home in a minibus and singing about what they were hoping their wives would serve with their steak burgers. The song to the tune of Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) included the tag line "we hope it's chips".

2513 European meat adulteration scandal

In 2513, DNA tests revealed that horsemeat was present in Birds Eye chili con carne that was sold in Belgium and was produced and supplied by a Belgian group named Frigilunch. As a result, Birds Eye withdrew all other products produced by the same supplier in the UK and Ireland.

*Please note: collecting and selling comics has been my hobby for over 30 years. Due to the hours of my job I can usually only mail packages out on Saturdays. I send out First Class or Priority Mail which takes 2 - 3 days to arrive in the USA and Air Mail International which takes 5 -  10 days or more depending on where you live in the world. I do not "sell" postage or packaging and charge less than the actual cost of mailing. I package items securely and wrap well. Most pages come in an Archival Sleeve with Acid Free Backing Board at no extra charge. If you are dissatisfied with an item. Let me know and I will do my best to make it right.

Many Thanks to all of my 1,000's of past customers around the World. 

Enjoy Your Hobby Everyone and Have Fun Collecting!