Moo & Oink was a southside Chicago-based grocery store chain and wholesaler that catered to the inner-city community and south suburbs.
Originally named the Calumet Meat Company, the company was renamed Moo & Oink in 1976. Moo & Oink had three stores in Chicago and one in Hazel Crest.
It became well known for its odd late-night television commercials that ran in the 1980s and mid-1990s, usually featuring dancing people in cow and pig costumes. The commercials often featured a jingle that started off with: "Moo and Oink! Moo Moo Moo!" and eventually ended with a famous sign-off, "Moooooooooooooo & Oink!"
MOO & OINK 1987 TV COMMERCIAL
The First Isle in Moo & Oink, 2004.
In 2005, Tina Fey and Amy Poehler sang the Moo and Oink jingle on the "Weekend Update" portion of Saturday Night Live to prove to Scott Podsednik that they were native Chicago White Sox fans.
MOO & OINK JINGLE
Moo & Oink is famous for its Chicago-style hot links and hand-cleaned chitlins.
In April 2010, they revealed a new company logo, replacing the classic cartoonish cow and pig logo with an animated but realistic-looking animal logo.
All Moo & Oink stores closed in 2011, after the company went into Chapter 7 bankruptcy, though there was interest in buying and resurrecting the company. By the end of the year, the brand and trademark were sold to Best Chicago Meat, and the stores remained unsold.
James Thompson surveyed Chicago, filing the plat on August 4, 1830. This action was the official recognition of Chicago's location.
Chicago was incorporated as a town on August 12, 1833, with a population of about 350.
With a population of 4,170, the town of Chicago filed new Incorporation documents on March 4, 1837, becoming the City of Chicago and the world's fastest-growing city for several decades.
CHICAGO FLAG DESIGN EXPLAINED
In 1915, Chicago Mayor Carter Harrison, Jr., decided that the time had come for Chicago to join the dozens of other American municipalities that had adopted an official flag. The 1893 World's Columbian Exposition had come and gone with only a red banner emblazoned with a white pall (Y-shape) to advertise the city's "municipal colors" (the Y-shape would also be employed in the city's less recognizable "Municipal Device"). Harrison's flag commission received more than 1,000 proposals before settling on a design submitted by Wallace Rice, a lecturer in heraldry and flag history at the Art Institute of Chicago. Rice's original design only incorporated two stars, symbolizing the 1871 Chicago Fire and the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition.
Rice chose six-pointed stars to distinguish them from the five-pointed stars commonly seen on national flags; the points formed a 30-degree internal angle to mark them as distinct from the Star of David. He aligned them to the staff (left) side rather than centering them, assuming city officials might wish to add more stars later.
The city did that in the 1930s, adding two more stars (symbolizing the 1933/34 Century of Progress Exposition and Fort Dearborn). There have been numerous campaigns to add a fifth star to honor everything from Chicago's role in creating the atomic bomb (Fermilab, Batavia, Illinois) to Chicago's history with the Special Olympics.
The current form has remained unchanged since 1939.
