Vintage Full Brand Orange Crate Label 🍊 1940s Waverly Florida Citrus, Comic Orange-Man, Waverly Growers Co-op

Who Packed Full Brand Oranges in Waverly? 🍊 Full: The Stick Leaf Man of Waverly, Florida

Size: 9" x 4 1/2"

He has an orange for a body, a single pointed leaf for a head, a startled little cartoon face, and thin twig arms and legs, set among the branches of the tree he came from. Beside him, in fat white letters rimmed in sky blue, is the whole brand in one word: FULL. This is the Stick Leaf Man, and labels like him rode the ends of orange crates out of Waverly, Florida — a Polk County settlement whose growers built their own packing shed by the railroad tracks in 1914 and ran it for more than ninety years on a cooperative plan a Danish immigrant brought with him. This one never made the trip. It was never pasted, and it still looks the way it did the day it came off the press.

🔍 What the Label Shows

A wide paper crate label, 9 x 4.5 inches — twice as wide as it is tall — with rounded corners, a black border and a deep midnight-blue field. Printed on it:

• FULL — white bubble capitals outlined in light blue, a leafy branch reaching into the F
• The Stick Leaf Man — a glowing orange body wrapped with a belt of two leaves, a green leaf head with raised brows, wide eyes and an open mouth, twig limbs, and a leaf under each foot
• Produce of U. S. A.
• WAVERLY GROWERS COOPERATIVE in yellow, and WAVERLY, FLORIDA in light blue
• BRANDAU CRAIG DICKERSON CO., NASHVILLE, TENN. — the lithographer's imprint, in tiny red type at the bottom right

The back is blank, with a faint ghost of the front showing through. It was never pasted to a crate: new old stock. The label never prints the word orange anywhere — the fruit is left entirely to the Stick Leaf Man.

🏢 Waverly Growers Cooperative: A Packing Shed by the Tracks

In 1914 a group of Waverly growers led by Charles Hillery Walker and W. L. Pedersen, a Danish immigrant, organized the Waverly Citrus Growers' Association and put up a small packing shed beside the railroad tracks. A cooperative let many small growers pool their fruit, have it graded and packed in one house, and sell it together under shared brands.

Pedersen knew how cooperatives were run in Denmark. When he died in 1950, the Lakeland Ledger credited that intimate knowledge with the "Waverly plan" of cooperative operation, which made the Polk County organization one of the most efficiently operated citrus plants in the state. His son, W. C. "Bill" Pedersen, became general manager in 1921, and the shed by the tracks grew into one of the most modernized packing houses in Florida. Under Bill Pedersen the co-op opened the Waverly Welcome House, promoted as "The Show Window of Waverly Growers," with a formal garden and picnic grounds, and thousands of tourists came to tour the packing house. The co-op grew to about 465 employees handling more than two million boxes of fruit a year from 7,000 acres of groves.

In 1936 the association took the name printed on this label: Waverly Growers Cooperative. So this label was printed in 1936 or later. The co-op shipped under other brands too, Dixie Boy among them. It is still a going concern — one of the fourteen citrus cooperatives that make up Florida's Natural Growers, the Lake Wales cooperative founded in 1933 as the Florida Citrus Canners Cooperative. In 2005 the Haines City Citrus Growers Association took over the Waverly packinghouse operations.

🏡 Waverly: Iron Mountain, Star Lake and a New York Name

Waverly began between 1882 and 1884, when the families of W. B. Campbell, Asa Gibbons and F. W. Ohlinger settled on what was first known as the Kissimmee Road. Campbell was from New York, and the settlement took the name of his hometown, Waverly.

The early settlers left the land around them full of their own names. The story goes that the nearby lakes were named for members of the families — Venus, Lee, Annie and Mabel — and that at a picnic in 1885 the company settled on Iron Mountain as the name for the hill, for its iron-rich rock. Star Lake got its name when Mrs. F. W. Ohlinger remarked that the lake looked as though it had five points, and in time a citrus label carried that name too. Much of this early history comes down through the co-op's own fiftieth-anniversary booklet, marking 1914 to 1964.

The freeze of 1895 devastated the groves. The growers replanted, and in 1914 they built their shed by the tracks.

📦 How a Label Like This Survived Unused

Paper citrus labels go back to California around 1887, and Florida packers used them for decades to put their brands on wooden crates. World War II changed that. Shortages of wood and metal ended the making of the wooden crate boxes, and cardboard boxes replaced them with the brand names already printed on. A paper label was no longer needed, and the last Florida crate labels were used in 1956. Labels printed for crates that were never packed were left over — which is how an unused Full label is still here to frame.

😀 Why an Orange With a Face

A crate label had one job: tell a produce buyer at a glance whose fruit was in the box. Waverly answered with a joke you get in half a second — an orange so FULL it sprouted a face, arms and legs, and looks a little surprised about it. The label was lithographed by the Brandau Craig Dickerson Co. of Nashville, Tennessee, one of the houses that supplied fruit crate labels to packers, and collectors' catalogs list more than one version of the Full label under that printer's name.

🖼️ Living With the Stick Leaf Man

• 🍊 A wide landscape frame — twice as wide as tall — for a kitchen, breakfast nook or child's room
• 🌴 A Florida citrus wall with other orange and grapefruit crate labels
• 🏡 A keepsake for anyone with roots in Waverly, Lake Wales or Polk County
• 🎁 A small, cheerful gift for a crate label or cartoon advertising collector

❓ Questions People Ask About the Full Crate Label

Who packed Full brand fruit?

The Waverly Growers Cooperative of Waverly, Florida, organized in 1914 as the Waverly Citrus Growers' Association and renamed in 1936.

Who printed the label?

The imprint at the bottom right reads Brandau Craig Dickerson Co., Nashville, Tenn.

How big is it?

9 x 4.5 inches, a wide rectangle.

How old is the Full label?

It dates to the 1940s. The co-op name printed on it was adopted in 1936, and Florida crate labels were last used in 1956.

Was it ever used on a crate?

No. It was never pasted, and the back is blank.

What was the "Waverly plan"?

The way of running the co-op that grew out of W. L. Pedersen's knowledge of Danish cooperatives, credited with making Waverly one of Florida's most efficient citrus plants.

Does Waverly Growers Cooperative still exist?

Yes. It is one of the cooperatives that make up Florida's Natural Growers in Lake Wales.