Ready for Reddy Megabit?

If you search distant memories — or search the Web if you are under 30 — you may remember a very interesting marketing character, Reddy Kilowatt. Created in 1926 by Alabama Power Executives, I am not really sure what Reddy stood for — most likely reliable energy delivered over electric lines. Based on the recent activity by power companies in the digital-services industries, maybe it’s time for Reddy to resurface as a symbol for broadband services over the same power lines. Delivering tremendous amounts of digital content and communications to consumers could make Reddy Megabit an instant success — especially with the Nickelodeon generation.

Are you Reddy?

CowboyWell, looky there! Reddy in a cowboy costume! Here’s a photo and an excerpt of a post written by tikiranch:

This was the first advertising nodder I bought when I started to collect advertising figures . I was at the Arizona Toy show and they had another antique show in another building. I was shopping it before the day before the toy show started and came across Reddy on a table full of costume jewelery. At first look I did not even realize that it was Reddy Kilowatt since he usually is not wearing a cowboy hat and western outfit.

Reddy by Richard

Reddy by RichardRichard Marquis, a pioneer of the American studio glass movement, gave a lecture at MIT on glass art in October 2006. One of his pieces features Reddy:

Reddy Kilowatt, right, a glass sculpture by Richard Marquis, combines classical and contemporary glass techniques then adds a good dose of whimsy.

Poor Reddy Kilowatt in Time Magazine, 1961

Here’s the first graf of an short article called The Last Switch, published in Time on Friday, June 23, 1961, as a reflection on a 4.5 hour NYC blackout:

In popular imagination, the 20th century metropolis is an indestructible giant—all those skyscrapers and subways, all that steel, stone and glass, all that raw, corpuscular power. But the modern city, New York included, is really a huge, rubbery shell. In the dead of night it collapses just like a deflated balloon, and each morning it is pumped back to life again, not with air but electricity. As little Reddy Kilowatt—the power companies’ coy public-relations name for juice—swarms all over town, subways scuttle, elevators shoot, lamps light, machines sew, write, add, cool, talk, sing and growl…

Try again for a fluffy Dream Cake

Weird. Apparently an old recipe in one of those electric company booklets falls totally flat now. Reddy’s recipe worked back in the 1950s, but doesn’t work now.

What a difference 50 years makes. In this case, the difference between a Dream Cake and a pancake. This sorry story began here a few weeks ago, with a recipe for a Dream Cake from Hawaiian Electric Co. Now, HECO’s recipes are generally quite reliable, tested by the company’s home economists, and this particular one, from the 1950s, was marked with handwritten notes indicating it had been tried out a few times, and distributed (remember the Reddy Kilowatt recipe booklets?), with nary a problem. It didn’t seem to call for retesting in the new millennium. But then came the complaints — three at once. Three cakes that all baked up flat as pancakes. OK, so I tried the recipe, twice, using up a carton of eggs, and got — pancakes. I have no explanation for why the recipe worked then and doesn’t now. But on behalf of HECO and myself, to anyone who wasted eggs and cocoa powder trying this out, we are really sorry.

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