Seventy-Two Bright Hopes

 

Heinz has been using the slogan “57 varieties” since 1896. It was always meant to convey the idea that Heinz makes and sells a lot of different items. But it never actually stood for a specific number of them. Henry J. Heinz claimed he got the idea for the slogan from a billboard for a shoe store he saw once that advertised 21 styles of shoes. Heinz chose the number “5” because he’d always felt that was a lucky number. The “7” he said was his wife’s lucky number. Fifty-seven was by no means an exaggeration. At least four years before the slogan was adopted, the Heinz company was already selling more than sixty different products. Many of them were condiments, like jellies and jams, pickles, relish, mustard and horseradish. But there were also tomato juice, baked beans, and several kinds of canned soup. By the early 21st century, the company was marketing more than 5,700 products.