Soup No More? What Campbell’s Name Change Could Mean for Collectors

From the cheerful Campbell Kids dolls to the famous green bean casserole made for holiday feasts to Andy Warhol’s soup can paintings, Campbell’s Soup is a cultural icon. However, every company has to change things once in a while, and Campbell Soup Company recently announced that it intends to change its name to Campbell’s Company.

Pop artist Andy Warhol made Campbell’s Soup Cans in 1962 using acrylic with metallic enamel paint on canvas. The work comprises 32 individually framed panels displayed in four horizontal rows of eight. Each panel is 20 inches high and 16 inches wide. When asked why he chose Campbell’s soup as his subject, he said: “I used to have the same lunch every day, for twenty years, I guess, the same thing over and over again.” Courtesy of Museum of Modern Art

Don’t worry—the soups themselves aren’t going anywhere—especially as we approach cool fall days when a warm mug of soup with a sandwich on the side makes the perfect meal. The company owns many other familiar brands, like Pepperidge Farm, Prego, and V8, and plans to emphasize its increasingly popular snack products. CEO Mark Clouse called the company’s new name a “subtle yet important change” that “retains the company’s iconic name recognition.”

Several toy companies, including Horsman and Ideal, made Campbell Kid dolls. This lot of four,
including two composition dolls and two small Ideal vinyl dolls, sold at the Apple Tree Auction
in May 2023 for $118. Courtesy Apple Tree Auction

After all, the company wasn’t always Campbell’s Soup. It started as Anderson & Campbell in Camden, N.J., in 1869. Abraham Anderson was a commercial canner, and Joseph Campbell was a wholesale vendor. The company introduced its first ready-to-eat soup in 1895 after both its founders had left. The name officially became “Campbell Soup Company” in 1922.

So, what might the name change mean for collectors? Campbell’s merchandise, mugs, and advertising premiums are well-known among advertising collectibles. The new name will help date collectors’ items, and the attention it brings to the brand could mean more interest in vintage collectibles.

A curved porcelain Campbell’s Tomato Soup sign with a bracket attached sold at Richmond Auctions in September 2023 for $6,900. “Campbell Soup Company” appears on the label in this sign, so it couldn’t have been made before 1922. Campbell’s made and sold its first condensed soups in cans in 1897. The red-and-white label appeared in 1898 and was said to have been inspired by Cornell football uniforms. The bronze medal on the can label is for the prize the company won at the Paris Exposition in 1900.  Courtesy Richmond Auctions

A look through the company’s history shows that advertising and brand recognition have always been keys to their success. It hasn’t lost its appeal to younger generations; there’s even a tag for Campbell’s Soup mugs on social media site TikTok! And Campbell’s Soup ads and premiums can be worth high prices to collectors.

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Follow The Leader: Warhol’s subversive ‘Mao Portfolio’ continues to provoke

Andy Warhol – Photo: Getty Images

Infamous and controversial, Andy Warhol’s “Mao Portfolio” was published in 1972 and reflects both the political and cultural zeitgeist of that era. As a prescient consumer of media and highly influential artist, Warhol’s fascination with China’s Mao Zedong was, in large part, attached to how the leader’s reputation and political power circulated as an image: “I have been reading so much about China,” Warhol said in 1971. “They don’t believe in creativity. The only picture they ever have is of Mao Zedong. It’s great. It looks like a silkscreen.” By appropriating Mao’s propaganda portrait and rendering it as a silkscreen, Warhol made the complex geopolitical moment his own; the complete portfolio was co-published in 1972 by Styria Studio, Inc. and Castelli Graphics in an edition of 250 and is today one of Warhol’s most iconic and widely recognized works of art. Warhol’s Mao prints, however, remain banned in China.

A complete “Mao Portfolio” by Andy Warhol features 10 images of the Chinese leader in vibrant colors. Photo: Rago/Wright Auctions

Following President Richard Nixon’s landmark visit to Communist China in February 1972—which broke a 25-year hiatus in diplomatic relations between China and the United States—LIFE magazine dubbed Mao the most famous person in the world. Given that Warhol had long been enamored with celebrity culture and the growing curiosity in America about life in China before and after Nixon’s visit, it makes sense that Warhol turned Mao into a subject for his art. The portrait model for Warhol’s Mao series is an austere photograph featured on the cover of many editions of his ubiquitous collection, “Quotations from Chairman Mao Tse-Tung” (The Little Red Book), first published in 1964. However, similar to Warhol’s colorful, glamorized images of Marilyn Monroe in paintings and prints throughout the 1960s, his renderings in the “Mao Portfolio” make use of a varied, at times garish, palette in which the supreme leader’s lips and cheeks appear rouged, and the mole on his chin darkened, while abstract, graffiti-esque squiggles add an irreverent flourish to the background on either side of Mao’s face.

With its bold, artificial colors and mass-produced screenprinting technique, Warhol’s Mao prints
turned the communist leader into a consumable object rather than a symbol of political ideology
Photo: Rago/Wright Auctions

Ultimately, Warhol’s “Mao Portfolio” explores the intersection of the propaganda of social control and the oversaturation ethics of capitalist advertising, transforming the Chinese leader into a consumable object. Despite Mao’s association with Communist ideology, Warhol’s prints turned Mao into a Pop icon and marked Warhol’s gradual shift beyond mostly appropriating images of celebrities into political portraiture and commentary — his 1964 work, “Birmingham Race Riot,” signaled an earlier predilection toward the political. While the Mao prints and corresponding paintings were largely praised for their bold colors and mass-produced techniques, they also faced criticism and censorship, particularly in China, where they were seen as disrespectful. Nevertheless, Warhol’s “Mao Portfolio” continues to provoke discussion about cultural exchange between the East and the West, leaving a lasting mark on international relations and the volatile currency of fame.