Label
Howdy Folks Frog
1930s
From the Green Frog Market in Bakersfield, CA
Special thanks to the Scott Hair Family for their generous donation
Thanks to the following for restoration:
David Svenson: patterning
Nights of Neon: glass fabrication
Paul Greenstein: glass installation, wiring
With its porcelain housings and ripple tin panels, we would date this to the 1930s. "Howdy Folks" flashes on and off, and the frog tips his top hat!
The first Green Frog Market in Bakersfield, CA opened in 1934 after being granted permission to use the name from a Stockton grocery store chain that began in 1930. In 1946, a second Bakersfield store was added. By 1948, the Stockton chain had four locations, at which time the owner sold the stores to build new Green Frog Markets in the San Francisco Bay Area, Oakland and San Jose. Years later, in 1988, a third Bakersfield location opened. Originally from one of the Stockton stores, this sign was installed at the second Bakersfield location to replace a sign with a sitting frog logo when they remodeled and expanded in 1952. In 2009, the owner relocated the sign to an enclosure to protect it from vandalism. In 2013, the famous frog sign was donated to MONA by the Scott Hair Family after the Green Frog Market's last Bakersfield location (store #2) closed.