LEGENDARY HEROES #13

JACK ARMSTRONG, THE ALL-AMERICAN BOY

When the radio announcer shouted the words "Jack Armstrong, the All-American Boy" and a male chorus swung into the "Hudson High Fight Song" in the background, millions of kids began to live vicariously the latest adventure of the brave and pure-of-heart Jack Armstrong.  It has been said that Jack served three purposes - to lead Hudson High to athletic glory, to overcome all villains that he encountered, and (most importantly ) to peddle Wheaties.  Jack Armstrong transformed the "Breakfast of Champions" into a major marketing phenomenon and in the process became the most memorable and enduring juvenile adventure show on radio.

Jack was created by General Mills cereal and was the brainchild of the VP of Advertising Chester Gale.  Gale developed the idea of Jack as a fictitious "everyboy" whom listeners would emulate.  If Jack ate Wheaties, boys across the country would too.  The adventures of Jack Armstrong were a product of Gale's imagination but the youthful hero was based on a real person named Jack Armstrong.  He was a member of Gale's college fraternity Phi Sigma Kappa at the University of Minnesota and Gale was impressed by the red-blooded name and wholesome nature of his classmate.  For the rest of his life the real Jack Armstrong would suffer a good-natured ribbing from all who knew him.  To bring his concept to life Chester Gale hired the Chicago advertising firm of Blackett-Sample-Hummert and they employed Robert Hardy Andrews to write the radio show.

"Jack Armstrong" debuted on July 31, 1933 out of the WBBM studios in Chicago and carried around the country by CBS.  The storyline focused upon the globe-trotting adventures of Jack who was a popular athlete at Hudson High in an unnamed midwestern state.  The main characters consisted of Jack's best friend Billy Fairfield, Billy's sister Betty, and their uncle Jim Fairfield.  Uncle Jim was an industrialist who frequently traveled to exotic parts of the world and would take Jack and the Fairfield siblings along with him.  The radio show aired daily for 15 minutes and found Jack traveling to the Northwest Territories to work with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, or outsmarting cattle rustlers in Arizona, seeking a lost city in the jungles of Brazil, hunting for ivory treasure to be found in the legendary Elephant's Graveyard, or rounding up a gang of counterfeiters in his hometown of Hudson.  Youthful listeners experienced a travelogue of exotic locales as Jack and his friends went from Egypt to Easter Island to India, Africa and Tibet.

The radio show had one sponsor during the entire run and that was Wheaties.  And whenever a new gadget was introduced into the continuity of the radio show, the juvenile audience knew that it would soon be offered as a premium through Wheaties.  But first the desirability of the gadget had to be established, and this was usually accomplished by the current radio bad guy who would do anything to get his hands on the device.  By the time it was offered to youngsters as a premium (for a box top and a dime) the items would sell by the millions!  Kids ate tons of crispy wheat flakes to acquire their very own Torpedo Flashlight, Explorer Telescope, Pedometer, Shooting Disc Gun, Dragon's Eye Ring, Secret Bombsight, Rocket Chute, Egyptian Whistle Ring (two short whistles meant be on guard for trouble), and the Tru-Flight model Sky Ranger airplane.

In 1936 Jack Armstrong made the leap to books, two volumes published by Cupples & Leon, then Big Little Books that were illustrated by Henry E. Vallely who portrayed Jack in a polo shirt, jodhpurs, and riding boots which was pretty much the standard outfit of 1930s heroes.  Surprisingly, noting the popularity of the radio series, it wasn't until 1947 that Jack came to the silver screen in a 15-chapter serial produced by Columbia.  In it Jack had to deal with a mad scientist and his death ray aboard a spaceship orbiting the Earth.  1947 was also the year that Parents Magazine Press published the first Jack Armstrong comic book in November.  But the comic book failed to capture the gee-whiz spirit of the radio show and ended in September 1949 after only 13 issues.  And the Register & Tribune Syndicate launched a Jack Armstrong newspaper comic strip drawn by Bob Schoenke that ran from May 26, 1947 to June 11, 1950.

While 1947 saw Jack Armstrong as a comic book, comic strip, and movie serial, it was also the year that the popularity of the radio series began to wane.  The format was changed from a daily 15 minute airing to a half hour episode that played twice a week.  This continued until June 1, 1950 when Jack took a short hiatus.  He returned to the radio airways on September 5, 1950 as a grown-up government agent in the new show "Armstrong of the SBI", but this ended after one season on June 28, 1951.  The franchise had finally run out of steam.  An animated TV series was developed by Hanna-Barbera but negotiations for the character rights fell through and the series was reworked to become the 1964 "Johnny Quest" animated adventure series.  Jack Armstrong had an impressive 18-year run on radio that enthralled its juvenile audience, and resulted in scads of premiums redeemed for box tops from millions and millions of boxes of Wheaties.  It became one of the most successful campaigns in advertising history.  "Jack Armstrong" was inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 1989.