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Historic Art Gallery

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Some Things Change

Every label tells a story. Here are some of ours, beginning with our original and earliest labels. (Some of these brands and products have been discontinued.) Go to our Products page and you'll find pictures of labels you'll see on your grocery store shelves when you shop for Millionnaires canned fish and seafood.

Labels through history distinguish the Millionnaires line of products as a distinctive collection of Canadian classics. One of the earliest bore a photo of the originators.


Club Des Trillionnaires

This brand was developed in 1975 for a one-layer sardine in tomato sauce product as a result of a customer request from a chain store in Montreal. As this product was to be one layer versus the two-layer packs for our 100g Millionnaires and Billionnaires brands, and to ensure that everyone understood this was a different product, the Trillionnaires name was created to align it consistently with the balance of the product line. Consumers could trust that the new product incorporated the same superior quality and value. From the tomato variety, an oil variety was added and the market was expanded to cover other areas of Canada.

Over the years, the costs associated with Trillionnaires escalated until there was little difference in retail prices between the Trillionnaires (one-layer - fewer sardines, bigger fish) and the Billionnaires (two-layer - more sardines, smaller size). We stopped selling the Trillionnaires product in the early '90s.

In 1989, the Trillionnaires brand name was applied to a line of sardines from Korea, targeting the Western Canada market. This line included skinless and boneless sardines in oil and water as well as whole "plain" sardines in oil and water. These products eventually disappeared from the shelf in the early '90s as the packer felt they could no longer pack to meet the strict regulations of the Canadian government's importation regulations on canned fish -- regulations, by the way, that Harold T. Griffin supports.


History Of the Canning Industry

In 1879, two enterprising Norweigians -- Johan Mejlaender and Martin Gabrielsen-figured out how to preserve the summers catch of sardines by lightly smoking the little fish over oak fires and packing them in oil. The sardine industry was born.

In the period before 1930 there were over 2,500 registered trademarks in use in the sardine canning industry, revealing a remarkable diversity of brand names and label designs.


Marbles

Marbles were used by the lithographic printer to polish their stones. After a period of use, the marbles became worn and were discarded. Inevitably they soon found their way into the hands of children. The prize for winning a game of marbles was sardine tin labels. These labels were highly prized and collected as baseball and hockey cards are today.

The game of marbles is still played today, the marbles are now glass rather than stone. The payment in sardine tin labels has disappeared and the marbles themselves are the prize. The lack of sardine tin labels since the decline of the industry was presumably an important factor in effecting the change.


Mandarin Oranges

This is a product from the past for Millionnaires. Traditionally, canned fish brands have had canned mandarins under their labels because tuna used to come from Japan and so did mandarins. The tuna importers saw a demand for mandarins in their domestic markets, so, they decided to import the mandarins in the same shipments as their tuna. Naturally, they used their brand which was synonymous with their canned fish products.

While some brand names in one food category do not work well in other categories, the canned fish brands seemed to make the transition to canned fruit (mandarins that is) unscathed. We had mandarins, not because we had tuna (we don't), but, because we saw it as an extension of our label which other fish brands had done successfully. We stopped the product due to product availability at the time.


Olives

Another "blast from the past". Again, we were near the source with the sourcing of some of our canned fish in Spain. And, again, we backed away from the product category due to availability.


Sardinettes™

Here is a new and unique product. Similar to our Skinless & Boneless Sardines, these Sardinettes are Spanish sardines in whole form, before any skin or bones are removed. Some aficionados of sardines will say that the less processing of a natural food, the better; there is less flavour and nutrition removed with less processing. We agree, these Sardinettes are tastey. While there are other whole Mediterranean sardines on the market, there are none as tiny as our Sardinettes, 7 to 10 sardines in a tin!

Another unique feature- we have registered the name "Sardinettes" (we made it up!) so we could best describe this product. We feel the name says it all- Sardinettes- small and delicious!

Our Mediteranean sardines are availible packed in water or sunflower oil, soya oil, spiced sauce (Sardinettes) or tomato sauce.


Kippered Snacks

This product is commonly known as "Snacks" or "Kippered Snacks". Kippered means smoked. This product is from larger herring and is processed with the skin on one side; placed in a tin; then naturally smoked, and finally canned. Historically, this product comes in an oblong tin, not the "square" one you get with most sardines.

 

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