Betty Crockers through the ages

For all of us who swooned with Bloom County's Milo Bloom as he crushed on Betty Crocker, here's a nice retrospective of the Betties of times gone by.

Betty Crocker Thru' The Ages, Stories Behind 10 Famous Food Logos

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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camelot

Betty Crocker is obviously a Republican.
- Donald Petersen
  
  No flag pin = RINO.
Navin_Johnson

65/69 hubba hubba.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  96 looks like it might coincide with the invention of Prozac.
machinelf

Man, they were pretty lazy in 1980–same exact face from 1965. My fave is 1986, it looks like the work of an actual painter. 1996 is terrible!
kansas

I wouldn’t kick Miss 1965 out of bed for eating crackers.
http://twitter.com/Elissa_Malcohn Elissa Malcohn

How interesting that the only Betty given a voice and implied use of the day’s high technology was the Betty of 1927 — five years after the generally accepted year of the first radio advertisements:
http://www.oldradio.com/current/bc_spots.htm
rob_cornelius

Ah but to quote the Cat…. Wilma is cute but you would go for Betty every time. Betty is a babe
http://twitter.com/Thurmanukyalur HEC Force Ointafo

Technically wouldn’t that be Betties Crocker?
Hanglyman

They all look like real (if occasionally bland) women right up until 1996, when she turns into a grinning mannequin with a deflated basketball draped over its head.
- Jessica Peters
  
  I think they discovered photoshop and went a little crazy.
Josh Smith

You missed the one where she`s an alien from an alternate universe.
- Michael Rosefield
  
  Shhhh! The Batterwitch’s drones will be on to you. Agh! I’ve said too much.
blueelm

1927 is my favorite hands down. She looks vibrant and young. Ironic, really.

The 90′s one is just depressing.
- http://dougsamu.wordpress.com doug rogers
  
  Yeah, I’m down for Miss 1927.
ciacontra

Betty Crocker is GLaDOS
phlavor

I’m down for 1965 but I have been watching a lot of Mad Men lately.
blueelm

I feel like the only person in the world who is *not* nostalgic for the 60′s… or even that interested in them :/
freshacconci

So, in 1996 she became Laura Bush?
- Petzl
  
  No, that was 2006.
- Robert Holmen
  
  Yeah, Laura Bush as what I thought when I saw those too.
- Pedantic Douchebag
  
  To me, they all look like some variation/mutation of her.
redstarr

36 one looks like a cranky woman I would not want to share a kitchen with. But I do like that she looks a bit older than some of them. I’ve always imagined Betty Crocker as being a young woman’s mother’s age, like maybe mid-40s ish. The newlywed girl’s literary mother who could cook that she wouldn’t have to be embarrassed to ask basic questions about basic dishes.
SCAQTony

1955 she was Donna Reed
1965-1972 she was Homophobic, orange juice, pimp, Anita Bryant
1986 she was Olympic ice skater, Dorothy Hamill,
Brad H.

’69 and ’36 for me. ’36 looks like she’d tell me to “make your own goddamn cake!!”.
http://www.facebook.com/fritterfae Eric Riley

My favorite meme version of this: Betty Crocker, Secretly a TimeLord.
http://www.megatoothpastemammals.com Carpeteria

It sure was a shame when they replaced her with an glassy-eyed android in 1996. Very forward thinking, though. That model should last at least a hundred years or more.
Petzl

Apparently Betty Crocker has Benjamin Button disease. In a few more iterations, she’s going to be a tween.
http://fallsastar.com Crashproof

The last one is so deep in the Uncanny Valley that the rest of them no longer appear human to me.
Donald Petersen

I guess it’s no real coincidence that Ms Crocker ’65 is the version that appeared on all my mother’s Crocker-related cookbooks and things, and also looks the most like my mother herself. Ms 1927 looks like she’s fresh out of high school, friendly and fun. Most of the rest look pretty forbidding, as if due to the stresses of running General Mills, Ms Crocker’s work/life balance fell heavily on the side of professionalism and lots of overtime rather than baking cupcakes for the local Cub Scout troop.

According to an uncited line in Wikipedia,

The current image of Betty Crocker, according to the corporation, is actually a combination of 75 real-life women of diverse backgrounds and ages.

So that must explain the impression she gives of having strolled right out of the Uncanny Valley of the Dolls.

Though my heart goes pitter-pat for Ms 1927 most of all, if Ms 1969 styled her hair like Ms 1986, she’d be a close second in the race to be my Crocker Crush.
peterkvt80

1986 was her hot Cybil Shepherd phase. After that she started experimenting with Fruit Gushers and became the sorry sight you see in 1996.
Madigan McGillicuddy

1972 is “my” Betty Crocker – so I’ll always have a soft spot for her.
’65 and ’86 are pretty good too.
Is our current Betty Crocker really from 1996? Christ, why not stick a rotating flaming logo on her, plus a “under construction!” sign and have done with it already? She looks very dated. We are WAY overdue for a new one.
Slowermo

Looks like she took an anti-aging potion in 1936, probably from the serum of the last Tasmanian tiger.
Brainspore

If you think Crocker has changed over the years you should take a look through Aunt Jemima’s photo album.
Halloween_Jack

When they rolled out the ’96 model, one of the wire services did a story on the update in which the marketers talked about how they deliberately designed her to look multiracial, or at least plausibly not 100% of European ancestry. To my eye, though, with all of them together, they look 100% Republican, with the possible exceptions of the first one and ’86 (a little bit of Rosalynn Carter).
- Donald Petersen
  
  What’s weird to me is that 1955, 1965, 1972, and 1980 all look like they could conceivably be the same woman (albeit one who had a serious hair makeover in the early 60s), and 1969 looks like her younger, slightly more liberal sister Janet Crocker. You know, the one who spent most of the autumn of ’67 shacked up in the Haight with an English bass player before her parents found her, dragged her back to Stepford, and married her off to Charles A. “Chuckie” Pillsbury IV, heir to the biscuit fortune and model for the giggling “Doughboy” mascot.
  
  Janet spent 1969 as body double for her more famous elder sister while Betty recovered from her nervous breakdown, and you can tell from her faraway gaze that somewhere, deep inside, Janet is wishing she were at Woodstock rather than posing for this goddamned box of pancake mix.
Robert Holmen

I like the “Dark Shadows” Betty of 1972.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Justin-Forposting/100002531076048 Justin Forposting

Each hair style seems to presage the hairstyle of the *next* first lady. The 1996 / Laura Bush is pretty clear, but I bet if someone took the time they could match 1980 to Nancy Reagan, 1986 to Hillary Clinton, 1965 to Pat Nixon and so on.
KriptoNYC

1986 looks like Roger Moore in drag, while the last one demonstrates that the technology needed to make the Crockertron has finally been perfected.
- penguinchris
  
  I’m not seeing Roger Moore there, although I do find him to be the best-looking Bond actor and Crocker ’86 to be the most attractive here (other than ’27 but she’s in a league of her own).
chgoliz

*shudder*

The mother I grew up with had the 1965 hairdo, from sometime in the 1950′s until the late 1970′s.

Never thought of her as more out of fashion than Betty Crocker before.
http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby

Captain Birdseye would have more variety – especially that one a little while back when he looked like James Bond in a captains outfit – not sure what that was all about.
http://profiles.google.com/macrumpton Michael Crumpton

86 is kind of a hottie, with a naughty glimmer in her eye!