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Cradle this heat-resistant, dishwasher-safe, eight-ounce chalice as you sip your Nescafé and you can imagine you’re anywhere in the world. Well, except for Tierra del Fuego, obviously.
Mugs like this were part of a long American tradition, when retail loyalty was engendered with various baubles and gewgaws. Many Americans did a lot of coupon-clipping and inner-seal-saving so they could equip their homes with dishware, cutlery, glasses, mugs and the like.
This particular globe mug is a recent addition to our kitchen, procured with seven others in a fit of nostalgia by My Lovely Wife. Ruth’s father used to run a satellite engineering consulting firm in Bethesda. Her mother worked there, too. So did Ruth. Because satellites circle the Earth, Ruth’s mom thought Nescafé globe mugs would be perfect for the conference room. So she assembled a set.
Those mugs disappeared long ago — Ruth’s parents passed away; the company was sold — but when someone in our neighborhood was getting rid of theirs recently, my wife had to have them.
The internet tells me that Nestlé introduced the mugs to remind consumers that its Nescafé was the best-selling instant-coffee brand in the world. There was even a TV ad featuring a solo trans-Atlantic sailor named Ken Clift who, in a raging storm, goes belowdecks to sip coffee from a globe mug. “Robust flavor that won the world” went the tagline.
A lot of my 1970s childhood was informed by TV commercials like that one. I didn’t understand some of them. To this day I’m still not sure what Calgon is. Detergent? Bubble bath? Hallucinogen? Is Calgon the same thing as Woolite, which on the 19-inch screen of our RCA Magnavox seemed to suds up in an identical fashion?
Around the same time Nestlé was boasting about its world-beating Nescafé, another product was vying to become a global caffeine hegemon. General Foods International Coffees was more than just hot beverages. It was a Pan Am ticket in a bone china cup, with flavors that included French-style Café Au Lait, Swiss Mocha and Café Vienna.
As brand expert Garland Pollard puts it on his BrandlandUSA site, the coffee “spoke to the American wish in the 1970s for a more exotic European taste.”
The coffee was made, Pollard writes, with the same technology General Foods used in Tang. The machinery created fine powder that, depending on the ingredients, could be dissolved in cold water by would-be astronauts or in hot water by single women still wistful over long-ago vacations and one-night stands with French waiters.
While I worried about Ken Clift — Did he ever make it to Europe or was he becalmed near the Azores, with only the robust taste of Nescafé to sustain him? — I was also unsettled by the women in the International Coffees ads, who, rather than living, seemed content to “celebrate the moments” of their lives.
But at least General Foods was trying. For a long time, American coffee wasn’t supposed to taste good. It wasn’t meant to be savored so much as applied, the way a mechanic applies grease to a drive shaft. Coffee was a way to get the machinery started and keep it going.
Today we can partake of all sorts of coffee offerings in all sorts of flavors. And Nestlé will still sell you a clear glass coffee mug. It’s etched with the name of the company’s pod-based coffee line: Nespresso.
The sheer multiplicity of exotic Nespresso flavors on offer would have blown the minds of those International Coffee ladies who pined for Jean Luc: Hazelino Muffin, Vanilla Custard Pie, Caramel Crème Brûlée. Other flavors namecheck countries — Ethiopia, Indonesia, Papua New Guinea — or cities: Paris Espresso, Cape Town Envivo Lungo, Tokyo Vivalto Lungo.
There’s a whole world of coffee out there. And I know just the mug to drink it from.
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