Puzzles of Van Houten’s Cocoa

Trade cards were a popular form of advertisement for businesses, especially in the Victorian period of the late 1800s/early 1900s. The advent of lithography made it possible to mass produce beautiful color prints.

The more interesting a card was, the more likely someone would hold on to it and share it. One way of ensuring interest in the card was to print a puzzle on the card or even make the card into a puzzle itself. In my opinion, one company was particularly good at incorporating puzzles into their cards - the C. J. Van Houten & Zoon company which made cocoa powder. They made many types of trade cards, but here I will concentrate on their puzzle-specific ones.

A little bit of background on the company. Caspardus Van Houten started a coffee and spice shop in Amsterdam in 1806, and by 1815 the Van Houten company was created, producing cacao and chocolate. The Van Houten company made many contributions to cocoa production, including the hydraulic cocoa press and a process known as “Dutching” chocolate. In 1864, the third generation takes over and the name officially becomes “C.J. Van Houten and Zoon”. Van Houten started marketing to the USA in 1889, and had a large presence at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Van Houten cocoa is still around today - the company being bought out by Barry Callebaut in 1998.

Now for the puzzles! Here is what I’ve found so far. I will add to this as I find more.

Puzzle Set: Help the children get to the cocoa

Van Houten produced a set of 8 puzzle cards with the theme of children. Each one is numbered.

Puzzle with Counters

There are 2 puzzles involving counters. The goal of the checkerboard is to place the counters 1-9 so rows and columns sum to the same. The Septum puzzle asked you to place a counter and slide to empty spot, and to fill the board except for 1 space.

Puzzles with Strings

Some cards have pieces attached to strings and asks you to untangle or move pieces.

Make this card warm

Some cards asked you to warm up the card to see a hidden images

Jigsaw

Use the letters of Van Houten Cacao to create a cup and saucer.

Other

Here are some other elaborate cards that don’t really fall into a category.

Sliding Puzzles

Later on, Van Houten sponsored contests with monetary prizes involving sliding puzzles. The first one was the Pasalong Slide Puzzle in the Daily Mail in 1930. Later they had a contest for the Tit-Bits Teaser No. 4, which they called the Pasalong Slide Puzzle No. 2, with the competition closing Feb 28th 1931

Patents

A few of the puzzles from above were patented by Frederick William Jacob. I wasn’t able to find much information about him, other than he lived in London and Amsterdam and also has some patents for bottling liquids. I wonder if he was an employee at Van Houten.

Here are the puzzle patents attributed to him:

Patent GB 190001807 from 1900: Cup and Saucer Puzzle
Patent US 667528 from 1901: Same Cup and Saucer Puzzle but filed in US
Patent GB 190108788 from 1901: Money box, I haven’t seen this one in production
Patent GB 190408868 from 1904: Violin Puzzle
Patent GB 190600116 from 1906: Spider Web Puzzle
Patent US 822740 from 1906: Same Spider Web Puzzle but filed in US