Which was when?
1958-1960 or so?
Since I’ve never seen an In-and-Out burger, I have no idea what this is supposed to mean. OK, Google gives me info. But you’re proving my point.
You’re not the only one – my daughters – 7 and 5 – refer to him as the “stick man.”
I know it’s that yellow swoosh, but it’s because I’ve been out west many times and because I love In n Out. That said, I have no idea if that yellow swooshy thing is supposed to represent anything. (I kind of think of it as the stylized edge of a roof on a restaurant as viewed from a sharp angle, but that’s probably my brain just trying to tie it to a concrete image of some sort.)
There was another instance I recall when a sort-of-famous (by name) guy appeared, and nobody knew who he was or what he did. That was one Donald F. Duncan. Surely everybody immediately knows that name and what he did?
Founder and owner of Duncan Toys, maker of Duncan Yo-Yo’s. And I’ll pluralize that with an apostrophe if I want to!
With the name Duncan, I immediately thought of yo-yos, but the specific full name itself I wouldn’t have been able to come up with.
That swoosh was an arrow, with an arrow-head at one end. I always figured that referred to the fast-food act of getting In and Out in a hurry.
ETA:
Look back at my post, several above. I added a picture.
smack I forgot about the arrow head at the end. Yeah, it conveys the idea of IN and OUT. I even have the In n Out burger book sitting here on my bookshelf, with every chapter featuring a pair of arrows on it, yet somehow, my memory elided that arrow at the end of the logo, which is kind of the whole point of the logo. Oof, my memory sometimes …
Does this book also have plenty of pictures showing the crossed palm trees?
Since this thread has sort of slithered onto the topic of I-n-O Burgers, here’s another story about them that may or may not have made national news, but it’s been in the news out here in the Wild West:
The company is headquartered somewhere in Southern California, and owned by a right-wing (Christian?) family. I never knew this, and I’m sure they’ve not been as public about it as, say, Chick-fil-A or Hobby Lobby. But when the Bay Area counties began to require restaurants and other indoor venues to check customers’ vaccine cards before letting them in, several I-n-O shops balked, and were shut down by their respective County Health authorities in San Francisco and Contra Costa Counties.
ETA: Their drive-thrus remained open.
Cite (one of any number you can find on-line), includes pic showing crossed palm trees:
As I’m thinking about it, I am wondering if, similar to Mr. Duncan, this was a matter of the show selecting a person whom most of the viewers knew of (and might recognize by sight), but whom the rather stuffy panelists on the show didn’t, and thus entertain viewers who got to see how clueless those fancy New Yorkers were. 
It does not. The middle of the book (“In-N-Out Burger: A behind-the-counter look at the fast-food chain that breaks all the rules” by Stacy Perman) has a middle section with photographs, but none feature the crossed palm trees or palm trees that you’re thinking of – the only palm trees are naturally occurring ones in pictures of individual In-N-Out restaurants. The index does not have an entry for “palm trees.” I can’t read through the whole book, but the reference to its logo is simply as a “yellow boomerang arrow.” I’m quickly scanning the book, and I see some bits about its imagery, but I don’t see a reference to palms, curiously. This is a 292-page book (not counting the notes and index at the end), and I’ve only done a very cursory search.
ETA: Wait, a Google search of the book does indicate that they are mentioned somewhere.
ETA2: Huh, I did not realize that these actual live palm trees planted in a cross formation were part of its look. I should read this book.
And if you look back at my post, you’ll see that I Googled the reference. Just showing a picture of crossed palms told me nothing. I had no way of knowing whether you were making a point or a joke or what. The palms are meaningless to anyone who’s never seen the franchise. For that matter, they’re meaningless if you’ve only seen one. There must be hundreds of regional franchises that are invisible to people outside their area.
And did Duncan ever use Duncan F. in its advertising? If not, why would anybody anywhere know his image?
I thought he was going to be the doughnut guy.
What a coincidence. Earlier today I was in Tucson and I passed by a cannabis shop that had for a sign, a tapered cylinder spinning around with the name of the shop, green crosses, and marijuana leaves on it. “What a strange sign,” I thought as I was waiting at a traffic light then the penny dropped: It was a converted ancient KFC store.
I hadn’t thought about that bucket-in-the-sky literally for decades and now two hits in the same day.
Yes, I did see your addendum, and @pulykamell 's two addenda too.
Every I-N-O place I’ve seen has those two crossed palms. It’s a thing with them. Here’s a page with some trivia about the company, including (near the bottom) a mention of it, and why they do it:
ETA:
They never used his picture that I know of, but I think I recall that his name was well-known.
Back to KFC, the Wiki article says the chain didn’t begin advertising on television until 1966, so if you didn’t have one in your local area, you probably had no idea KFC even existed, much less Harland Sanders. (As an aside, I didn’t even know McDonalds existed until my family moved to St. Louis in 1963. They hadn’t been introduced in Dallas when we lived there.)
Also, at least some of the franchisees put their names on their restaurants and Kentucky Fried Chicken was subordinate. That didn’t change until until the new owners introduced more consistent branding later in the 1960s. Even as late as the 1980s, my in-laws in Cleveland still called KFC, “Kenny King’s.”
I seem to recall seeing the local Kentucky Fried Chicken (it wasn’t KFC yet in those days), and there being some sort of stylized Colonel Sanders on the sign/marquee, and wondering who he was. Then later when I was about 5 or so, I recall asking my parents who “the Colonel” was in the fried chicken commercials, and why was an “army guy” selling fried chicken? (I knew enough from old war movies and stuff to know that colonels were in the army by that point). This would have been 1977-1978 or so.
My dad laughingly explained that “Colonel” was more of an honorific in Colonel Sanders’ case, and that he was just the guy who founded Kentucky Fried Chicken.
A great many KFC stores had similar distinctive architecture, so even after some of the are long-no-longer KFC stores, it’s clear that they once were. The peaked pyramid on the roof was particularly common. This Pinterest page has many examples: