Vintage 1940s Foot High Melons Crate Label 🍈 — F. H. Hogue Co., Firebaugh CA & Yuma AZ — Risqué Pinup

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🖼️ This original 1940s “Foot High” melon crate label is a striking example of mid‑century American commercial art, with a bold and risqué pin-up illustration attributed to the artist Rique — no artist signature appears anywhere on the sheet, so that attribution rests on the trade record rather than on anything printed here. What the label does print is its trade block: PACKED AND SHIPPED BY F. H. HOGUE CO., with two office towns set either side of the firm's name — Firebaugh, Calif. and Yuma, Arizona — and the commodity in yellow caps at the right, MELONS.

🍈 This is a desert-melon label. Firebaugh sits on the west side of the San Joaquin Valley and Yuma sits on the lower Colorado — two of the hottest melon deals in the American West, and a pairing that let one shipper run cantaloupes and honeydews from the Arizona desert early and the California west side later in the season. A firm with offices in both towns was following the melon season north, and the label had to work in both. Where most crate labels leaned on fruit imagery or regional symbols, Foot High went for a joke: the pin-up lies on her back with one leg kicked straight up past the brand line, so that her foot is level with the word HIGH. That is the whole gag, and it is why the type is split with the figure filling the gap between FOOT and HIGH.

🆕 This example survives in New Old Stock (NOS) condition, meaning it was never applied to a wooden crate. Because crate labels were intended to be disposable and discarded after use, unused examples like this are far less common than applied or damaged survivors.

📏 Measuring approximately 10 × 4 inches, this is the smaller horizontal format produced for the Foot High brand. Larger versions of this design exist, but this size reflects how many labels were actually used in commercial distribution rather than decorative display.

🎨 Today, original crate labels are collected as examples of American advertising history, agricultural ephemera, and graphic design. This piece offers a tangible connection to 1940s visual culture and makes an excellent addition to a collection, archive, or framed display.

🏷️ What Is Printed on This Label

• FOOT HIGH
• MELONS
• PRODUCE OF U.S.A.
• PACKED AND SHIPPED BY
• Firebaugh  Calif.
• F. H. HOGUE CO.
• Yuma  Arizona

A printer's imprint is present in dark-red microtype in the bottom-left corner, but it is too fine to read. Its tail scans as S. F. CALIF. — a San Francisco lithographer — and that is as far as the object can be pushed. No house name is claimed here, and any short code sitting beside such an imprint is a plate or form number, never a year.

There is no printed date and no copyright line anywhere on this sheet, front or back. The 1940s dating rests on the trade record and the owner's notes, and nothing on the object bears on it either way.