My favorite Christmas film, by far, has always been ‘A Christmas Story’. The 1983 movie focuses
on this kid, Ralphie Parker, and his quest to try and convince his parents and Santa,
to get him a Red Ryder Carbine-Action 200-shot Range Model air rifle.
Santa: You’ll shoot your eye out, kid. Merry Christmas.
However, the movie is so much more than that. During the lead up to Christmas, we get to see
a series of small side-plots play out that gives us a look at Ralphie’s childhood in Indiana. It’s
what makes the film so endearing. It’s a little slice of 1930’s life through the lens of a kid.
One of those vignettes, specifically, revolves around the conflict between
Ralphie’s mother and father after his dad wins a lamp shaped like a woman’s leg.
The Old Man: What a great lamp!
Mother: I don’t know...
He’s absolutely proud of it because he won it and wants it in the front window for everyone in town,
and she hates it because it looks tacky.
Growing up, I always wondered… why a leg?
I mean, from a storytelling perspective I get it. Making the lamp a woman’s leg gave
Ralphie’s mother a good reason to hate it. Sure, they could have just gone with an ugly lamp,
but by going over the top and making it an actual leg it added a comical touch to it.
Mother: That is the UGLIEST lamp I have ever seen in my ENTIRE LIFE!
But within the world of the film, I couldn’t help but question it.
Why was Ralphie’s dad winning a leg lamp? Who was making and giving away leg lamps?
For years I just assumed it was one of those things where you go “It’s just a movie, Rob,
don’t think too hard about it.” As it turns out, however, there is a reason behind it.
The short simple answer is that the leg is a logo. Specifically,
it’s a logo for the company that sponsored the newspaper contest that Ralphie’s father entered.
See, ‘A Christmas Story’ is based on the book “In God We Trust:
All Others Pay Cash” by author Jean Sheperd. Shepherd actually also
serves as the narrator of the film and even has a little cameo in it.
Jean: The line ENDS here. It begins there!
His book is a series of short stories based on his own childhood during the Great Depression
living in Illinois and Indiana. In the chapter on the leg lamp, titled “The Lascivious Special
Award That Heralded The Birth of Pop Art”, Shepherd explains that newspapers in that
time used giveaways like this to coax people into buying papers.
It was the depression after all, and money was tight. His father, being a
sucker for the contests, entered one through the now-defunct newspaper, The Chicago American.
The grand prize for that particular contest was said to be $50,000 with
“hundreds of additional valuable prizes.” In the movie, he references this right towards
the start of the film when asking his wife about the Lone Ranger’s nephew’s horse.
Mother: That another one of your silly puzzles?
The Old Man: Yeah, it’s another one of my silly puzzles. Could be worth fifty-thousand bucks.
Without specifically naming them, Shepard mentions that this contest, in particular,
was sponsored by a soda company that used a woman’s leg wearing a stocking as
the logo. So when Ralphie’s dad finally won one of the consolation prizes and
ended up with a leg lamp, it was simply a piece of merch for that soda company.
The Old Man: I won it.
Swede: Sam hell you say you won it?
The Old Man: Yup. Mindpower, Swede. Mindpower.
In 1910 a man by the name of Claude Hatcher formed a company in Georgia called Union Bottle Works,
in order to sell his brand of ginger ale called Royal Crown. A couple of years later he expanded
into soda with a cherry-flavored soda called Chero-Cola. So with that, he renamed the company
the Chero-Cola Co. It’s not often you change the entire name of your company whenever you
have a new product, but it was a trend that this company followed for a while. Plus Chero-Cola
Co did actually sound kind of cooler.
In 1924 he moved on to fruit-flavored drinks. Now, I couldn’t find any official explanation
for the name of the brand. The best I was able to dig up was a rumor, which was that one day
Hatcher overheard one of his salesmen describe a competitor’s bottle as being
“knee-high” in size, and he liked the sound. So when it came time to name his new brand of soda,
he went with Nehi, spelled N-E-H-I. Nehi soda came in cherry, orange, grape, and strawberry flavors,
and turned out to be a hit for the company. So in 1928, the company was renamed once again to Nehi Corp.
Making a play out of the phonetics of the name, and possibly tying back to its origins,
the company decided to use the image of a woman’s leg up to her knee as its logo. It didn’t stop at
the logo, though. The soda offered two variants of bottle caps at the time, one with just a text
logo, and one with the image of a woman’s leg. The company also patented their own bottle design,
partially in an effort to set themselves apart from Coca-Cola. The bottle featured this sort-of
rope and cross-hatch pattern that was commonly referred to as their “silk stocking design”,
further pushing into that leg concept. They had “a thing” so they were just fully leaning into it.
Like the lamp in the film itself, Nehi soda’s popularity wasn’t long for this earth.
Sales began to drop in the 1930s. In 1934 Nehi Corp introduced a new cola that called back to
its earlier brand: Royal Crown. Royal Crown Cola or as it more commonly came to be known,
RC Cola, took over the spotlight and so once again the company would rename itself. Its
ownership has changed hands a number of times since then, and RC Cola still exists to this day.
And while it’s not as popular as it was in Ralphie’s day,
you can still find Nehi cola as well, though it usually involves digging around the internet or
looking for a Cracker Barrel. It comes in three flavors, Orange, Peach, and Grape.
So that’s why Ralphie’s dad wins a leg lamp. The prize was a piece of merch for Nehi brand soda,
who sponsored the contest he entered. It would be as if Coca-Cola sponsored the contest and he won
a polar bear lamp, or 7-Up sponsored it and you got a lamp with the “Make 7 Up Yours” guy on it.
I’d keep that lamp.
Yeah. Tastes like Orange, Peach, and Grape.
Nehi, if you want to send me a check for this video, I am more than open to the idea.