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Ovaltine Stood (and stands)
for the innocence, comfort, wholesomeness and
safety of English childhood. Originally a drink
marketed by a Swiss doctor called George Wander,
it was (and is) known as Ovomaltine on the
Continent, but the name was shortened when it was
first introduced here in 1910. Advertising was
always Ovaltine's forte, and the rosy-cheeked
dairymaid in the ads with her basket of fresh
eggs and sheaf of barley epitomised its spirit of
simple purity. |
The Ovaltiney Club, founded
in 1935 and broadcasting from Radio Luxembourg
every Sunday evening from 5.30 to 6 p.m. became a
secret society for children, with its own badges,
rule books, and inside codes: by 1939 it had five
million members. The programme's signature tune,
'We are the Ovaltineys' , became probably the
best-known jingle in the world; and was so well
embedded in the national subconscious that the
company was persuaded to revive it as part of its
television commercial in 1975.
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Though
primarily a children's drink, Ovaltine was
supplied to the armed forces in both world wars.
Tommies sang 'we are the Ovaltineys' as they
marched, in sharp contrast to the German
preference for the 'Horst Wessel Song.' It has
been an official drink at Olympics since 1932,
went up Everest with Sir Edmund Hillary and with
Freya Stark to the Arabian desert.
It figures, needless to say,
in the Betjeman* oeuvre: 'He gives his Ovaltine a
stir, and nibbles at a petit beurre.' Though
still sold simply as a malted food drink, its
actual ingredients are somewhat more banal and
clinical: barley and malt extract, to be sure,
but then dried skimmed milk, sugar, whey powder,
glucose syrup, vegetable fat, full cream milk
powder, fat reduced cocoa, caseinates, egg
powder, emulsifier, stabilisers, flavouring and
vitamins. The Ovaltine dairymaid still smiles
winsomely out from the goo at us; and her drink
still conveys instant childhood.
Text from: The English
Companion by Godfrey Smith.
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