‘Jolly Green Giant’s Valley’ exists in Minnesota

Within the fertile Minnesota River Basin lies “The Valley of the Jolly Green Giant.” Just outside the community of Le Sueur, Minn., is a large sign that welcomes visitors to “Green Giant” country.

Le Sueur is where the Green Giant Company took root. Local farmers and investors came together in 1903 to build the Minnesota Valley Canning Company factory to process cans of white cream-style corn.

(The town took its name from French explorer and fur trader Pierre-Charles Le Sueur, who discovered the Minnesota territory.)

Ward Cosgrove, a son of one of the original cannery founders, assumed a leadership role with the business in 1914. He created the Le Sueur brand of “very young small sweet peas.”

Cosgrove realized it took a lot of those little peas to fill a can. He went to Europe in 1925 and gathered jumbo-sized “Prince of Wales peas” that were both “tender and sweet.” The seeds thrived in the fields around Le Sueur. Cosgrove called them “Green Giant Great Big Tender Peas.”

The “Jolly Green Giant” mascot emerged in 1935. Leo Burnett, a young advertising executive, created this enormous, solid green fellow, wearing a sunny smile…and a skimpy toga of leaves.

Author Don Osell said Burnett created the entire “concept of the Valley of the Jolly Green Giant...a mythical, Shangri-La place where the soil was richer, the rains softer and gentler, where the sun shone warmly on the fields...and where the vegetables grew like no place else in the world! The caretaker who overlooked this idyllic place was a jolly, friendly giant.”

The cannery in Le Sueur officially became the Green Giant Company in 1950, so this year marks a 70-year milestone of “Good Things from the Garden…Ho, ho, ho.” The booming, deep bass voice came from Elmer “Len” Dresslar Jr.

Perhaps the most innovative advertising pairing of all time was the campfire scene from 1963 with Tennessee Ernie Ford singing to children about the Jolly Green Giant, as the giant basked in the light of a rising full moon.

This novelty mini-album was titled “When Pea-Pickers Get Together.” Ford earned the nickname as “the Ol’ Pea-Picker” due to his catchphrase, “Bless your pea-pickin’ heart!”

"In 1972, a mysterious new visitor arrived to the Green Giant’s Valley. Much like the beloved harvest icon, this new character was green and dressed in leaves,” wrote Heather Taylor for AdvertisingWeek magazine.

“He was pint-sized and easily fit into the palm of the Jolly Green Giant,” she said. “He was the Little Green Sprout, who introduced kids to the healthy goodness of veggies.”

Things began to change in 1979 after the Green Giant Company was merged into The Pillsbury Company. The entire community of Le Sueur (about 4,000 people) mourned when – dagnabbit all to heck – Pillsbury shuttered the original canning plant in 1995.

Pillsbury was acquired in 2001 by General Mills. In 2015, General Mills sold the Green Giant and Le Sueur brands to B&G Foods of Parsippany, N.J. (B&G owns more than 50 food brands including Ortega and Cream of Wheat.)

Through all the “dizzying change,” Osell commented, “the Green Giant brand has survived and prospered. The moral: Companies are transient; brands and products – if they’re built on a stable platform and nurtured – can ride out the changes and prosper.”

In 1999, Advertising Age magazine, listed its top-10 advertising icons of the 20th century. The Green Giant came in third (behind the Marlboro Man and Ronald McDonald).

Rounding out the top 10, respectively, were Betty Crocker, the Energizer Bunny, the Pillsbury Doughboy, Aunt Jemima, the Michelin Man, Tony the Tiger and Elsie the cow.