Vintage 1940s Tot Brand Vegetable Crate Label 👶 — T.O. Tomasello Co, Watsonville CA — Cute Baby Produce Art

👶 The Family Firm Whose Initials Became a Baby

This one carries a wink built right into its name. The packer was the T.O. Tomasello Co. of Watsonville, California — and "T.O." plus a "T" spells "TOT," so the family turned its own initials into a brand and then drew a literal tot, a beaming baby, to seal the joke. It is an original Tot Brand vegetable crate label, one of the most charming pieces of California produce branding you could hope to frame, and it survives unused and intact. Everything here is drawn from the label in the photographs and from the record of the Tomasello firm; nothing is invented.

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🍅 Who the T.O. Tomasello Co. Was

The Tomasellos were a real Watsonville produce family, and their business ran for generations out of a house at 275 West Beach Street, in the heart of one of California's great growing towns. Watsonville sits in the Pajaro Valley, a fertile pocket of the central coast just inland of Monterey Bay, where cool marine air and rich soil make for year-round vegetables and fruit — and the Tomasello company packed and shipped that bounty out to markets across the country. "Tot" was not their only brand; the same firm shipped tomatoes under labels like "Dominator" and "Tri-X," and it even ran a banana-ripening operation, the kind of full-service produce house that kept a coastal farm town connected to the national table. The family stayed at it across the decades: Joe Tomasello, born in 1935, came back to the business after military service and ran it as owner-operator for some forty years. This little label is a genuine piece of that family enterprise.

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🥬 What the Label Shows

Against a deep navy-blue ground, the brand name "TOT" leaps forward in big, three-dimensional block letters — bright yellow faces with red-orange sides, thrown toward you like a marquee — with a small red "BRAND" beside them. To the upper right, ringed in a pale-blue circle like a locket, sits the mascot: the rosy-cheeked, fair-haired face of a smiling baby. Below spreads a generous garden still-life, painted with real appetite — a great green head of cabbage, a creamy cauliflower in its collar of leaves, ripe red tomatoes, a pair of orange carrots, fresh peas in the pod, two green bell peppers, a cluster of red beets — all fanned across the lower half and framed by pale sage-green chevrons. The sheet states its business plainly: "PRODUCE OF U.S.A," above a banner reading "PACKED AND SHIPPED BY / MAIN OFFICE WATSONVILLE, CAL." and, across the bottom, "T.O. TOMASELLO CO." with a little star.

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🍼 The Baby, the Pun, and a Small Mystery

The cleverness is hiding in plain sight, and it's very much a family joke: a produce house named for a man's initials, T.O, turning itself into a "Tot" and putting a baby on the box. It's exactly the sort of friendly, memorable wordplay that made a brand stick in a grocery buyer's mind, and it's charming to unpack nearly eighty years later. There's a small, much-loved puzzle attached, too: collectors have long noticed how the Tot baby resembles the famous Gerber baby, the 1928 illustration that became one of the most recognized commercial images in America. Whether the Tot artist was nodding to Gerber or simply drawing from the same wholesome well, the family resemblance is part of the label's enduring charm — a genuine little mystery of vintage advertising, riding on a Watsonville family's produce.

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🎨 Bold 1940s Label Design

Where the romantic citrus labels whispered, this one was built to shout across a market floor — appropriate for a firm selling freshness rather than nostalgia. It is a confident piece of 1940s commercial graphics: the punchy three-dimensional lettering, the high-contrast navy-and-cream palette, the appetizing realism of the vegetables, the graphic snap of those pale chevrons, all printed in the saturated lithographic color of the era. (That printing is the seasoning; the story is the Tomasellos'.) It has aged into a genuinely handsome graphic object, the kind of bold, cheerful vintage design that looks wonderful blown up on a wall.

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📦 Genuine, Unused New Old Stock

This is an original period label in New Old Stock condition — printed to be pasted on a Tomasello vegetable crate and never used. The reverse, shown in the photographs, is clean blank cream stock, the sign of a label stored flat rather than applied to a box. It shows only very slight corner wear, exactly as visible in the photos, and is otherwise bright and whole. It measures approximately 9¾ by 7 inches, a compact vegetable-crate label. It is offered precisely as pictured, with nothing retouched or concealed.

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🖼️ How to Live With It

• 👶 Frame it for a nursery, a child's room or a family kitchen — a smiling baby over a garden of vegetables is about as warm as wall art gets.
• 🥕 Hang it in a kitchen or dining room as bold, appetizing vintage food art; the navy-and-cabbage palette is a designer's gift.
• 🖼️ Group it with other vegetable and produce labels for a farm-to-table gallery wall with real punch.
• 🍅 Set it in a Watsonville or central-coast California home as a genuine piece of local produce history.
• 🎁 Give it, matted and framed, as a baby-shower or new-parent gift with a real vintage story.

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💛 Who It Is For

This finds its people easily: the crate-label collector who wants a clean, unused vegetable label with a great hook; the lover of vintage advertising and baby-image ephemera who knows the Gerber-baby resemblance and delights in it; the Watsonville or Monterey Bay local proud of the region's growing history; and the gift-giver hunting something genuinely charming and genuinely old for a new baby or a food-loving friend. There is only this one sheet, an individual original, offered as shown.

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❓ A Few Honest Answers

Who made it?

The T.O. Tomasello Co, a family produce house in Watsonville, California — "Tot" comes from the founder's initials, T.O.

What is it for?

Mixed vegetables. The label reads "Produce of U.S.A." and names the Tomasello firm as packer and shipper.

Is it original?

Yes — an original 1940s lithographed vegetable crate label in unused New Old Stock condition, with a clean blank back.

Was it ever used?

No — the blank cream reverse shows it was never pasted to a crate.

How big is it?

Approximately 9¾ by 7 inches, a compact vegetable-crate label that frames well.

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🥬 A Real Watsonville Produce House

It's worth knowing what kind of business stood behind this baby. The T.O. Tomasello Co. was a working family produce house in Watsonville, in the Pajaro Valley — a fertile coastal district just inland of Monterey Bay that has been one of California's great year-round growing regions for well over a century, famous for berries, apples and vegetables. The firm operated from a plain address on West Beach Street, and it did the full range of a mid-century shipper's work: it packed and shipped tomatoes and mixed vegetables under a catalogue of brands — not just "Tot" but tomato labels like "Dominator" and "Tri-X" — and it even ran a banana-ripening operation, the kind of local house that kept a farm town wired into the national grocery trade. And it stayed a family concern across the generations; Joe Tomasello, born in 1935, came home to the business after his military service and ran it for some forty years. There's no grand corporate saga here, and I won't pretend there is — just a real Watsonville family that fed the country and had the wit to turn its own initials into a smiling baby.

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🍼 A Family With a Sense of Humor

What I keep coming back to is how much personality this little firm had. Plenty of packers named a brand for a saint, a place or a pretty girl; the Tomasellos looked at their own initials — T.O. — saw the word "tot," and cheerfully put a baby on the box. That kind of wit tells you something about the people. And the baby wasn't their only brand: the same family shipped tomatoes under names like "Dominator" and "Tri-X" and even ripened bananas, so a grocery buyer might have known the Tomasello name from several corners of the produce aisle. This label is the friendliest face of that catalogue — a working family's warmth, printed in three-dimensional letters and a rosy-cheeked grin, the kind of small, genuine object that carries more heart than a whole shelf of new decor.

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✨ Why It Matters

This is a small piece of Americana that makes people smile — and it belongs to a real Watsonville family. It is a genuine 1940s vegetable label from the T.O. Tomasello Co, built on the family's own initials-into-"Tot" pun and crowned with a beaming baby that has charmed collectors for generations, all above a garden's worth of produce. Preserved unused, its back still blank, it is ready to frame as bold, cheerful, storied wall art. There is only the one.

📋 What Is Printed On This Label

Every line of type on the sheet, transcribed from the label itself rather than paraphrased:

• TOT
• BRAND
• PRODUCE OF U.S.A.
• PACKED AND SHIPPED BY
• MAIN OFFICE
• WATSONVILLE, CAL.
• T.O. TOMASELLO CO.

Printer: no lithographer's imprint, form number or plate code appears anywhere on this sheet. None is claimed here.

Packer, not printer. The firm named on the label is the house that grew, packed or shipped the fruit. It did not make the label — commercial lithographers did that, and where one signed the sheet the imprint is quoted above.

What is actually in the still life. One head of cabbage, one cauliflower in its collar of leaves, two red tomatoes, two orange carrots, several pea pods, two dark green bell peppers and two red beets with their tops. A small pale-blue five-pointed star is printed between the two yellow ribbon banners.