I recall during junior high - around the time of our nation’s bicentennial - having an assembly for all the 7th graders where they tried to get students to participate in candy bar sales. They were selling ‘Marathon’ bars, if I recall correctly - a brand I’ve never seen for sale in any store. I also recall that kids could earn various prizes for selling certain amounts of candy. Top tier sellers could earn things like bicycles or model rocket kits, but there were a host of less impressive prizes awarded for sub-herculean sales efforts too.
I never questioned it at the time, but as an adult I find myself a bit puzzled by the whole thing. I mean what was the point of public school involvement? Was this supposed to represent some facet of education concerning sales? Did the schools maybe get a certain percentage of kickback from the candy bar sales? If so, that aspect was never emphasized to the students. I seem to recall they tried to get kids interested in selling magazine subscriptions the following year. Does anyone else recall doing this in junior high?
In kindergarten we sold packets of seeds. When I went to a parochial grammar school we sold Holy Childhood Christmas Seals and Christmas cards. If you sold enough, you got a plastic nativity set. (I wrote about these a few months ago. They came in different sizes. The more seals or cards you sold, the bigger the Nativity set. Sell enough and you could get not only Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, but also the ox and the ass, and an angel instead of a star. Sell more and you’d get shepherds. Sell even more, and you’d get Three Kings and a three-dimensional baby Jesus.)
I don’t know why they did it. But it was a valuable lesson in Getting Out and Selling, which is something you ultimately have to do as an adult.
In my primary school we sold Beich brand chocolate bars. There were three flavors: caramel-filled, almond, and rice crunch. Obviously the caramel ones were the best.
In middle school, we sold stuff from a brand called Mr. Z’s. I mainly remember there were frozen pizzas, but they also had cheeses and the like.
For high school band, I sold “Happenings” coupon books. These were big books, maybe 1.5 inches thick with a ton coupons in them for local businesses. I recall they sold for $16 (this was in the mid '80s), and you could quickly recover your costs, especially if you were using the coupons for discounted meals at restaurants. My parents were always my first customer - not just because they wanted to support the band, but they really did think it was a great deal for them.
In Boy Scouts, for a little while we sold Glad plastic bags - everything from sandwich baggies to big ol’ trash can liners. We took orders from people and delivered the goods later on. It was a big seller because it was something people actually used.
I also sold crummy candy bars (Pearson’s Nut Rolls) and crummy coupon booklets, the latter containing penny-ante coupons. These things didn’t sell as well.
We were always getting roped in to sell stuff for band. Mostly I recall big (for the time) boxes of M&Ms. There was a disasterous attempt to have us sell these cheesy crystal suncatcher things that would hang in a window or whatever. No one wanted those. For a couple successive years there were DIY pizza kits with frozen crusts and packs of sauce and toppings.
My my own funds, I sold custom counterfeit report cards. I’m almost certain the principal knew and turned a blind eye.
Our school had the annual wrapping paper and Christmas card sales to raise money for something, and considering the number of kids in our neighborhood, you couldn’t go door-to-door because your classmates lived there. Plus it was quite $$$. My mom had 3 of us within 30 months of age, so each a grade apart - no way could she afford to buy from one of us, let alone each of us.
In high school, the choir sold tall candles in glass jars that were decorated with pictures, and the outside was textured - not having any luck finding a photo. Anyway, I am not a salesperson, never was, never will be. So to answer the topic - I sold nothing!
The schools got something, although I wouldn’t call it a “kickback”. ( Typically, how it goes it there is a box of candy that sells for $20 and the school sends $10 per box to the candy company and keeps the rest , so more like a commission) That’s not going to be emphasized to the students before high school , although the parents were probably told where the money was going - to keep tuition down in a private school, to support some extracurricular activity in a public school.
The following is a list of things I’ve seen sold by kids , mostly for school but some may have been Scouts or sports teams - candy, popcorn, cookies, magazines, wrapping paper and cards, pizza kits raffle tickets, pretzels and possibly a few more that i forgot. Also , in high school students sold ads in the yearbook.
In the 60s & 70s, we were never asked to sell anything in elementary school or junior high. In high school I took German (language) and we sold Toblerone candy bars and Advent calendars. But for the life of me, I have no idea why we sold them. There was no prize or trip.
Popcorn sales have been the mainstay of Boy Scout fundraising going back at least 40 years. Girl Scouts always seemed like they had a better product, though, with their cookies. Popcorn tends to be a take it or leave it kind of thing, whereas Girl Scout cookies are widely seen as being a desirable treat whether fundraising or not.
I was in Key Club in high school, Junior and Senior years; we did semiannual (IIRC) candy sales to raise funds to raise funds the club. Ordinary vending machine stuff like full-size packages of Reese’s cups, M&M’s, etc. but, since there were no vending machines in school…
I could always count on one guy in the Special Education section to be a repeat customer and my last class of the day was on the same floor.
I remember selling M&Ms; this was a small box. (Googling, it might be what’s called a “theater box” size.) We sold them for fifty cents though we paid $0.25, so 100% markup. This was very successful, mostly to other kids in school. And I see co-workers selling chocolate candy bars for their children, but these are some unknown brand name.
We must have been of the same era because those figures match my memory. At the time, I thought of that box as big because it was larger than the grocery store size bag. By today’s standards, that box is laughably small. I think a single serving is defined now as 1100 M&Ms. Or approximately one shovel load.
