The article today concerns a postcard by the French illustrator Benjamin Rabier (1864-1939). It depicts a scene from one of the most famous La Fontaine fables, The Crow and The Fox, you will find the text in English, below:

Master Crow perched on a tree,
Was holding a cheese in his beak.
Master Fox attracted by the smell
Said something like this:
“Well, hello Mister Crow!
How pretty you are! How beautiful you seem to me!
I am not lying, if your voice
Is like your plumage,
You are the Phoenix of all the
inhabitants of these woods.”
At these words, the Crow is overjoyed.
And in order to show off his beautiful voice,
He opens his beak wide, lets his prey fall.
The Fox grabs it, and says: “My good man
Learn that every flatterer
Lives at the expense of the one who
listens to him.
This lesson, without doubt, is well worth a cheese.”
The Crow, ashamed and embarrassed,
Swore, but a little late, that he would
not be taken again.

Rabier specialized in animal drawings, Wikipedia refers to his 1906 edition of the La Fontaine fables, which you can see here.

He created a number of characters, mainly animals, such as a duck called Gédéon, but also created a playful little boy: Tintin-Lutin (affectionate diminutive of a little boy called Martin), who actually then inspired Hergé when he created his worldwide known Tintin.

During the First World War, in August 1914, the French military staff sent no less than 63 units of fresh meat transport to the Front. Many Parisian buses were used to this effect. It was called RVF or transport of fresh meat supplies (ravitaillement en viande fraîche).

They had to find a mascot, which the troops would recognise as the RVF approached. A contest was organised and who better than Rabier, specialised in animal drawings, to invent the logo for transport carrying beef? Well here is a lorry bearing the logo. What a surprise! Do you recognise it?

What name should be given to such a cheerful cow? If the Teuton enemy dreamt of Valkyries (Wachkyrie in French) those war heroes, the French troops had to dream of the arrival of the “Wachkyrie“, misrepresentation of “La Vache qui Rit” (The Laughing Cow).

Léon Bel, a cheesemonger’s son, who made Comté cheese, worked in the RVF.

Just after the war, Bel returned home and, with the help of certain Swiss cheese makers, starts to make a processed cheese, with left over Comté and Emmental, he sells it in little boxes, in portions, easy to transport and to eat…. ideal for post-war France. This was a great success. Then Bel remembers the funny logo. He contacts Rabier, who alters his drawing a little and adds enormous earings to the cow, to make it look more feminine and … the rest is now part of modern marketing history.

Benjamin Rabier produced more than 250 albums of what we would today call comic strips. He also wrote theatre plays, created a few more logos and even produced cartoons.

Rabier, who died in 1939, certainly did not have the time, even if he was a great precursor, to open a Facebook profile, but on this profile, you can discover everything about him. For example, an extract from a documentary in 2012 on his life, called “The man who made animals laugh”. It is an animated film, lasting a few minutes, produced from pictures from the beginning of the 20th century
and is really worth watching: