Little Orphan Annie

Little Orphan Annie is an American radio drama series based on the popularity of the comic strip Little Orphan Annie. It debuted on Chicago's WGN in 1930, then moved to the NBC radio network Blue Network on April 6, 1931. It aired until April 26, 1942.

The show was initially sponsored by Ovaltine, a flavored milk supplement, and its scripts were written by Ovaltine's Chicago ad agency staff. They shunned the overt political themes of Gray's newspaper strips and concentrated instead on pitching Ovaltine, using almost seven minutes of each broadcast to do so. Fans could redeem Ovaltine proofs of purchase for a secret decoder badge that decoded brief messages airing in the last moments of the show. Contrary to Jean Shepherd's assertions, the messages were never advertisements for Ovaltine, but were usually related to the following episode. In 1940, Quaker Puffed Wheat Sparkies became the show's sponsor and brought fictional aviator Captain Sparks to the show. Sparks eventually became the star, relegating Annie to secondary player.

The show featured product placement and exploitation of premiums to retain and attract new listeners. Among those items were secret decoders, shake-up mugs for drinking Ovaltine (the show's sponsor product) and secret decoders for the Little Orphan Annie secret society. The 1934 fan club's member's handbook included a simple substitution cipher with a resulting numeric cipher text. This was followed the next year with a membership badge or pin that included a cipher disk - enciphering the letters A-Z to numbers 1-26. Announcer Pierre Andre often talked about the virtues of the shows' products, sometimes stretching towards three minutes in length.