We never said we were highbrow here at Slashfood...
Some of you may already be hip to this little trick. My father showed it to me as a young boy and, honestly, I'd sort of forgotten about it until, during a recent visit home, I came across a folded package of Land O'Lakes and realized that Dad must be passing the wisdom on to my younger brother.
For those unaware, the deal is that if you make a little flap out of the package of butter that the Native American woman is holding and then fold under the other image of the girl just so, her knees will appear in the flap and, well, you get the idea.
Warning: the following page contains graphic images of illustrated knees. Possibly NSFW.
The Land O'Lakes history page on LandOLakes.com says the package was designed by
an illustrator named Jess Betlach in 1939 and has remained pretty much the same ever since. According to Illustration Magazine, a logo lasting that long unchanged is
quite an anomaly. Could it be that Land O'Lakes can't bear to give up trick?Could this have been intentional? Maybe it's just one of those "Pink Floyd/Wizard of Oz" things where we'll never really know. I have to wonder if Mr. Betlach was the one who let the cat out of the bag:
"Bring me a box of butter..."
"What?"
"Just do it. I need to show you something..."
Who knows? The Land O'Lakes butter trick has certainly gotten some love on the internet, though. There's a Flickr photo set (her dad showed her, too) and some step-by-step instructions with comments and innovations.
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