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'World's Largest' From '64 FairBig Cheese Due HomeCheddar Critics of Display Given Food for ThoughtWisconsin legislator* and Madison resident* will have their first look Monday at the highly publicized World’s Largest Cheese when it goes on exhibit at the Monona st. entrance to the state Capitol building..lust returned from its 1964 World’s Fair showing, the Cheddar—largest ever made—will be; unveiled in its glass and chrome!45 - foot Cheesemobile w h i c h | soon will start on a tour of ma-l jor cities to continue advertising the Wisconsin cheese and dairy industry.Promotional Arm The 17H-ton mammoth, which used 170.000 quarts of milk to produce in a continuous 43-hour operation at Steve's Cheese near Green Bay. is owned by the Wisconsin Cheese Foundation, 115 W.Main st.The foundation is the promotional arm of the 71-year-old Wisconsin Cheesemakers Assn., whose; annual convention at Green Bayj Tuesday and Wednesday will be| featured by appearance of the;Cheesemobile. uThe target of considerable criti- |? eism that it was not favorably lo-I I caied at the fair, that it was too! commercial, that it was not well! ■ displayed at the rear of the Wi*-| , consin Pavilion and too close to a steakhouse, the 34,591 - pound;Golden Giant nevertheless con-founded its critics by attracting f '-j more than a million people a I month and proving to be one of the fair’s most publicized attractions.Asked to comment on these criticisms, Roland C. Behle. managing director of the foundation, said the cheese was located at the rear of the privately financed pavilion to draw people through it.Fair Commercial “As it was, we had to spend several thousand dollars to build a special road to get the huge, heavy tractor-trailer up to the rear of the building, he said. It would have been prohibitive to get It to the front, where no spacewas available. taxpayers’ money, but theAs to the pavilion and our ex- _____*hibit being too commercial, hecontinued, the entire fair is com-This Is How Holiday Magazine, in a Summertime Issue, Paid a Humorous Tribute to Wisconsin's Cheeseall the 24 state exhibits at the exposition.Proven Success ‘New York spent lift million on it* project. The Missouri building just across the Avenue of t h e United Nations from the b i g cheese cost $4 million,” Behle said. All of this and much moremercial. The 1939 fair lost $18 million, whereas this ‘commercial’ fair is paying off its entire $30 million bonded debt the first year.More than 1.5 million people pa tronized the steakhouse, according to Behle, with the result that many more saw the chese than otherwise would have.He said that several state exhibits are In the red, due to excessive costs, whereas the Wisconsin Pavilion is described by General Potter, assistant to Robert Moses, who planned the fair, as being the most successful ofWisconsin Pavilion did not cost Wisconsin citizens a penny.As an advertisement of Wisconsin’s multi-million-dollar c h eese industry, largest in the world, the cheddar has proven to be a success.The foundation’s sera pbook contains so many stories and pictures from newspapers and trade journals that, if they were laid end to end, they would reach the length of three football fieldsTrucking and dairy magazines featured photos of the Cheesemobile on front covers, and Holiday magazine ran a full-page, four-color cartoon drawn by Ronald Searles of Paris and London.Five Buses Carrying 200 Students Pile UpWALLER, Tex, Ofi — Five buses piled into each other at a traffic light here Saturday.There were no serious injuries. State patrolman B. J. Snow saidWomen Gamblers Win Equal Rights RulingYUBA CITY, Calif. (UPI) — A superior court judge has thrown out a city ordinance banning women dealers from card rooms.Judge Richard Patton ruledThat cartoon alone, Behle said, if run as an advertisement by Wisconsin cheese makers, would have cost over $15,000.” Generates Interest Most trade associations are unable to get their product or an industry personality on a nationwide TV show, according to Behle, whose foundation succeeded in getting Wisconsin cheesemakers featured twice in 10 months on the TV show ’To Tell the Truth.If we had had to pay for the TV shows and the newspaper and magazine publicity received, we would have spent $260,000, Behle said. “As It was, the world’s largest cheese generated so much interest and national attention that we feel its promotion of the Wisconsin cheese and dairy industry has been an outstanding achievement and an ex cellent investment.Four per oent of the publicity was unfavorable, according to foundation records — all of it from Wisconsin. Of thousands of comment slips signed by fair visitors, only seven were critical, and six of these were from Wisconsin.One of these criticized the tinted glass through which the cheese is visible. The tinting is necessary, according to Behle, to keepthe inside temperature down while the Cheesemobile is on tour in the South.Finance BalanceIndustry largely has financed the $150,000 project, which was originated by a Madison insurance executive, J. Addison England, vice-president of Church Mutual Insurance Co. and manager of cheesemakers divison. Bor dens have contributed $50,000, Ford Motor Co. the $25,000 Diesel tractor, Highway Trailer of Edg erton the 35 foot trailer, and Transicold Co. the 10-ton refrigeration unit to keep the cheese edible.Foundation members and Wisconsin cheese and dairy industry and suppliers are financing the balance, aided by a $35,000 grant from the 1963 Wisconsin Legislature. The Bordon Co. has contracted to buy the cheese at the end of the 1965 fair.“If the World’s Fair and nation-wide tour of our ‘Golden Giant’ can help increase national cheese consumption by only one ounce per person per year, the cheese industry will have to produce 6,000 more tons of cheese annually, Behle concluded. Wisconsin’s share amounts to over $2.5 million additional income to cheesemakers and farmers.
Newspaper Details
Madison Wisconsin State Journal
Madison, Wisconsin, US
Sun, Nov 08, 1964
Page 14
Full Page
Clipped by
Uw -.
WI, USA 12 Jan 2024
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