Burnham’s Jellycon Trade Card

This promotional trade card features a fancy young boy enjoying a spoonful of Burnham's Jellycon, a powdered gelatin dessert sold from 1896 through the 1920s. Jellycon originally came in six flavors: raspberry, strawberry, orange, lemon, wild cherry, and calfsfoot (that is, unflavored, which the company suggested could be used to make wine and coffee jellies). footnote Mint, peach, chocolate, port wine, and sherry wine varieties would later follow. footnote footnote

Jellycon was produced by New York City-based company E. S. Burnham Co., which also manufactured Burnham's Cream Custard (a sort of forerunner to the instant pudding) as well as clam chowder, clam bouillon, beef extract, and a beef wine and iron tonic, common around the turn of the century for its supposed revitalizing properties.

The back of the trade card describes a gift-with-purchase promotion for aluminum jelly molds, sized perfectly for one package of Jellycon and promised to "last a lifetime." This was the latest of a series of promotional freebies from the company; previously, they gave away Spanish-American War souvenir spoons (see ad below) and a set of five folding paper dolls.