Ovaltine Makes You Gay As Hell

I honestly can’t cook worth a damn. I know that’s not very Atomic Age housewife of me, but honestly I’d be more of a “feed my family frozen dinners in front of the television while hiding in the closet eating Valium by the handful as if I lived in a Rolling Stones song” type back then. Anyway, dust off the Naugahyde seats of your Futoro House and gather round, because today I wanna talk about Ovaltine.

Ovaltine wasn’t specifically a product of the Atomic Age; it had actually been around for decades beforehand, but it, like dozens of other instant ready-mix products, had gained a special foothold during that era where it was imagined we’d all be in space eating freeze-dried ice cream within a single lifetime. It was a drink for future astronauts and super-detectives.

Advertisements at the time made bombastic claims. Actual quote: “Science was never more justified than in the long and patient researches which produced Ovaltine.”

It was a superfood, decades before there even was such a term.

Well before the days of Super Spy Decoder Rings and Captain Midnight Glowing Atomic Doodads, Ovaltine first hit the shelves in America in 1915. And because you couldn’t just drink things because they taste good, like everything else back then it was marketed as a “health tonic.” Although no longer outright claiming that any more, that aspect continued on with their marketing for decades later.

Many ads of the time targeted the parents of sensitive, effeminate boys who seemed disinterested in sports. Boys that couldn’t fit in with the others and seemed nervous around them. Concerns were raised of them developing “complexes” and “feeling left behind” the other boys.

As noted by historian Elaine Tyler May, there was an uneasiness developing in regards to an “overabundance” of maternal care for boys. Lack of paternal participation in child-rearing could lead to struggles with gender role alignment. Nervous, under-weight boys could be interrupted or even halted on their journey to manhood. Or, even worse, turn out homosexual. Ovaltine had an answer for this heteromasculine uneasiness.