4" x 2-5/8"

Refrigerator magnet pictures an early 1900s advertising trade card for Hood's Sarsaparilla tonic, featuring a little blonde haired girl wearing Dad's hunt clothes, a red jacket, riding crop and black derby cap, surrounded by 7 foxhounds. The C.I. Hood Company of Lowell, Massachusetts was a prolific advertiser in the late 1800s and early 1900s. Their CIH & CO compound extract, Sarsaparilla, was manufactured from the mid 1870s to the mid 1940s but wasn't trademarked until July 11, 1893. Charles Hood had moved his operation to Lowell in 1886 to occupy a 62,000 sq. ft. building. Hood's father and brother were druggists in Vermont. The primary ingredients in Sarsaparilla were birch oil and sassafras and the taste was similar to root beer. It was promoted as a blood purifier and cure-all. Ayers, producer of the other best selling sarsaparilla beverage, was also located in Lowell but began bottling earlier, prior to the Civil War. There is an excellent online discussion of the bottles used by sarsaparilla products. In 1906 the alcohol content in Hood's Sarsaparilla was 18.8%.....and in Ayers a whopping 26.2%. The Sarsaparilla vine root is still used by purveyors of homeopathic medicine.