The Quaker Oats Man is an internationally known trademark figure that has been representing Quaker Oats products since 1877. The story of the Quaker man is more than simply that of a popular trademark character, however. It is also the story of the emergence of the modern American market system and consumer culture.
As the development of mass production in the nineteenth century increased the number of products rolling off production lines, manufacturers faced the challenge of moving goods as fast as they were made. They turned to advertising to increase demand for specific products. Oats, for example, had previously been sold only in bulk and were both unbranded and relatively unfamiliar as a food. When new technology made highly efficient, high-volume production possible at the Quaker Mill in Ravenna, Ohio, the owners of the mill, Henry Seymour and William Heston, set out to develop a brand identity for their product in order to establish a national market for it. In 1877 they registered “a figure of a man in ‘Quaker garb’” with the U.S. patent office, becoming the first to register a trademark for a breakfast cereal. Despite the lack of any actual Quaker connection to their product, they claim to have chosen the figure, a full-length picture of a Quaker man holding a scroll with the word “pure” on it, because they felt that the image represented integrity, quality, and honesty.
