Comic Strip History - Dinty Moore

Once again, coming to you from the "I had no idea how complicated this would be when I started" department, we have Dinty Moore, the well known brand of canned soups and stews from the Hormel company. The Dinty Moore brand has included a number of different Hormel products over the years, but the best known is, of course, the beef stew. Some in the know, such as myself, may be aware that a comic strip character of the same name existed prior to the launch of Hormel's brand, but even they may not know exactly how the name made it from the newspaper onto the can. I certainly wasn't aware of all the complexities, until now. In 1913, cartoonist George McManus launched the comic strip "Bringing Up Father," which he wrote and drew for William Randolph Hearst's New York American newspaper, and which was syndicated to newspapers across the country by what would later become known as King Features Syndicate. While it isn't well remembered now, it was very popular in its day, and by the end of…