GORDO BEAN POT
While this item has appeared a few times on eBay, one lucky Friend of Gordo found hers in a thrift store and another inherited it from her Mother, having no idea what it was until checking in here (thank you, Google!). The pot relates to a gimmick Gus Arriola used to gauge interest in his strip by offering a recipe to anyone writing in and asking for “Gordo’s Beans Weeth Cheese” and chili con carne. See below for the recipe.
Originally offered in 1948, the pot came with an electric cord and in at least “six distinctive colors – brown, beige, blue, and green” according to the ad below, provided by Terri Puleo, who found her blue bean pot at a thrift store. We later learned it also came in yellow and now have that, plus green, adobe (brown?), and blue. If you have a pot of a different color, we would love to see it! (Please email me at jimguida@sbcglobal.net)
The ingredients went directly into the pot, which made cleaning a chore, as the pot weighs over five pounds! The pots are shown in the ad with electrical cords, but we rarely find one with the cord. However, thrift store shopping has found a matching plug for one!
Although the images are difficult to see, even on the pot itself, we have Gordo, Pepito and Senor Perro, Pig and Rooster embossed pot.
In respect to the pots above and the ads below, Terri says, the pots “started out priced at $9.95, which was a considerable sum in 1948… would be about $105 today. It was later lowered to $4.99, then $3.99… but even that may have been a bit much for many housewives.” She also directs us to page 70 of Robert C. Harvey’s ACCIDENTAL AMBASSADOR GORDO (https://www.amazon.com/Accidental-Ambassador-Gordo-Comic-Arriola/dp/157806161X/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=accidental+ambassador+gordo&qid=1578081988&sr=8-1) (although I’m partial to page 4), where Gus Arriola explains the origin of the pots. “The success of the (bean) recipe offer (see below) suggested tangential possibilities, and for a brief time in the fall of 1948, an enterprising fan developed a ceramic bean pot. ‘I designed it,’ Arriola said, ‘and it was called the Gordo Bean Pot. And we hustled around -he did pretty good on it. But somehow or other, he didn’t get the backing he needed to produce them in the thousands. We went on quite a tip publicizing it. I flew up to San Francisco, and in one of the big stores there, I was autographing bean pots with an engraving tool, actually chipping into the glaze.'”
Friend of Gordo Elaine McVay was generous enough to share an image of the rare “autographed” Gordo Bean Pot. Thank you, Elaine.
HERE ARE THE ADS FOR THE POTS
…and this is the recipe which inspired the pots!
