Loop Back: The Retro Snoboy Sign
Though it’s been decades since the last Snoboy apples, oranges or pineapples were shipped from the corner of 7th Street and 5th Avenue North near Target Field, the company’s happy little mascot still towers over the intersection, just as he has since the 1950s.
The sign marks the spot where Snoboy’s parent company, Minneapolis-based Pacific Gamble Robinson (PGR), had its regional headquarters along with a sprawling distribution center that could handle 10,000 train carloads of food each year. PGR was described in newspaper articles as the “world’s largest wholesaler of fresh fruits and vegetables.”
When it opened in early 1953, the facility here included seven climate-controlled banana-ripening rooms, a peanut roasting plant and vast refrigerated rooms for other fresh foods. It used the tracks of Burlington and Great Northern as well as a fleet of delivery trucks to get its foods throughout a sizable region of the U.S. and parts of Canada.
But after 33 years in this facility, the company was acquired by another food distributor from Washington state in 1986 which opted to close down the Minneapolis facility. It was eventually torn down and replaced by a Public Works maintenance facility for the city of Minneapolis.
Snoboy wasn’t always a Minnesotan — and wasn’t even… well, a boy. He actually started out in the Seattle area, where the Pacific Fruit & Produce Company introduced him in 1925 as a more traditional snow man with a top hat.
Five years later, a Minneapolis company, Gamble Robinson, founded by brothers Ross and David Gamble along with Harry Robinson, merged with Pacific Fruit & Produce, forming the new Pacific Gamble Robinson.
By the time PGR opened its big Minneapolis facility, Snoboy had ear muffs and a more child-like, Stay Puft Marshmallow look, which the company proudly displayed along 7th Street in the North Loop.
Please explore the Historic North Loop section of this website for many more fun photos and articles about our neighborhood’s history.
By Mike Binkley, North Loop volunteer*
(*not an actual historian; I just pulled together information from newspaper archives, public records, online searches and most helpfully, the digital archives at the Hennepin County Library)