Do You Know the Story of Pronto Pup, the Corn Dog Born on the Oregon Coast?

The mighty corn doggy empire Pronto Pup was born guiding the Rockaway Beach front Natatorium right after a rainy Labor Working day in 1939, as ex-bootlegger turned sizzling doggy vendor George Boyington fed stale buns to the seagulls—the hurry he’d stocked up for hadn’t took place because of to the weather conditions. If only he could make the buns on demand, Boyington figured—then, there would be no problems about overstock heading stale. So he decided to experiment with a cornmeal batter and a deep fryer, and honed the recipe at Portland’s Centennial Mills. Shortly, he and spouse Versa were slinging Pronto Pups out of a window in Portland.
A postwar Pronto Pup site at NE 30th and Sandy place out advertisements for a griddle operator under “Assistance Wanted Males” and a vehicle hop underneath “Support Desired Girls.” In 1949, the Boyingtons filed a trademark-infringement grievance from a pair offering a “spurious imitation” termed Pluto Pups (a title that life on now primarily in Australia, along with Dagwood Canine, which influenced trademark infringement scenario, far too). Meanwhile, through the ’40s the Boyingtons were being also luring franchisees with are living demonstrations and classified ads promising distinctive territory in far-flung spots like Montana and Missouri. A handful of ’40s-era franchises endure all around the Great Lakes, in which Pronto Pup is a staple of beach front boardwalks and point out fairs.
“Every couple of several years I’ll get a reporter from the Minnesota State Good,” states Baxter Boyington, a son of George and Versa, who was a infant when Pronto Pup started but who labored at some later projects of his dad’s very long just after the relatives experienced moved to California and marketed the enterprise. At 1 warm-pet-on-a-stick stand in Avila Seaside his father started off just after a noncompete period, Boyington remembers, they had pinball, a jukebox, and a dance flooring.
“My dad was a seriously uncommon man in lots of methods,” claims Boyington, who was named following his father’s bodyguard from his bootlegging times again east in convert, his parents named “Bananas Baxter”—a deep-fried banana on a adhere, rolled in powdered sugar—in their son’s honor.
“He was always striving to invent or offer or do a thing,” continues Boyington. “When you might be a child, you never have an understanding of that not everyone’s dad invented the scorching doggy on a stick.”


“George was a true promoter,” states Dave Sulmonetti, whose father and uncle (who experienced been George Boyington’s lawyer) acquired the Portland-dependent batter service provider Pronto Pup Co from Boyington around 1950. “He held events all-around the country” to sell franchises, Sulmonetti states, even though most of all those fizzled out. By way of the ’50s and ’60s folks put their Pronto Pup stands and trailers up for sale, assuring prospective buyers they took only two people today to operate. Theoretically, operators could rake in hard cash all summer season and acquire the winters off.


Alex Sulmonetti, Dave’s father, got the batter into Fred Meyer, Kienow’s, and other grocery merchants for house cooks, but stopped soon after immediately after a couple of a long time when the packaging corporation they’d applied went out of small business. The Sulmonettis never ever marketed franchises like Boyington did, Dave Sulmonetti states, but anyone who buys the batter can use the name, together with the a few Pronto Pup locations in Oregon, in Otis, Rockaway Seaside, and Seaside.
Nowadays Sulmonetti sells generally to cell companies: carnivals and concessionaires across the US and Canada, including a few at the Oregon State Truthful. He consistently can take an outdated branded trailer (which he bought from a Eugene couple he employed to work for) to the Tillamook County Good, Pacific City’s Dory Times, and Portland Worldwide Raceway situations, also.
Oregon Pronto Standbys
When a Pronto Pup opened in Seaside in the vicinity of the conclude of World War II, it was 1 of lots of new companies that were element of a coastal increase introduced on in section by wartime fuel rationing that had many travelers sticking nearer to residence. Just off the sidewalk on hectic Broadway, the Seaside locale nowadays is crammed next to bumper vehicles and a tilt-a-whirl. The extended-standing Pronto Pup in Otis, on the way to Lincoln City, is a person of the original franchises from the 1940s. It is really now aspect of Otis Pizzeria.
The Rockaway location, a handful of blocks from Pronto Pup’s birthplace, was opened in 2016 by a Portland attorney who erected a big fiberglass corn puppy on its roof. That’s very corny, as is the rideable corn pet dog out entrance, the place “older people seem to be to have additional entertaining than the children,” says Diane Langer, who purchased the store with her husband or wife in late 2021.


“It was usually one of these items in the back of your intellect, to personal your own spot someday,” claims Langer, who started joking about getting the Rockaway Beach front Pronto when she saw news tales about it staying for sale in early 2021. As the year wore on, while, the jokes turned actual. Before long she and her husband or wife ended up component of the Great Resignation, leaving their jobs at a Tacoma automotive business and making an attempt to figure out how to preserve Xmas lights attached to a giant corn puppy in the driving coastal winds. Langer’s brother designed some antlers for the puppy, much too, and her brother-in-law aided install them: “He is a retired lineman, so he is employed to heights,” Langer claims.
Michigan: Mystery Pup Scorching Location
About 2,000 miles east of Rockaway Beach, on the shore of Lake Huron’s Tawas Bay, yet another new Pronto Pup owner was gearing up for the summer season period when we spoke in May. Previous 12 months, Margo Larkin took in excess of a Pronto Pup shack with her sister and sister’s fiancé. “I actually under no circumstances experienced a Pronto Pup right until we bought this stand,” she suggests. The cart delivers not just the classic pet, but other regular objects and rotating experiments. You will find an eggplant possibility, drizzled with honey and lined in toasted sesame seeds, and they’ve used the batter with deep-fried Oreos, apple rings, fried eco-friendly tomatoes, and far more, served along with tailor made-elixir lemonades and frozen pops. “My sister and I have usually been really artsy form of people today. We each truly like creating things, possibly with components or with foods.”
The enterprise Larkin and her family members took about was begun by a person originally from Grand Haven, across the Decrease Peninsula on the edge of Lake Michigan. The beach front city is property to a single of the original franchises Boyington offered in 1947.
“For decades all people considered my dad invented it,” claims Carl Nelson, whose father and terrific-uncle caught one particular of Boyington’s displays and quickly used $600 setting up a nine-by-7-foot creating in Grand Haven. Nelson began worked at his dad’s scorching canine shack when he was 13 and by no means definitely still left. The income-only shack is even now likely robust just after 75 years, even though it lost some customers after Nelson posted a tirade in 2020 on the business’s Facebook page in which he claimed mask mandates and the fight from COVID-19 were “not a overall health issue” but a political 1, recommended the Black Life Subject movement “has practically nothing to do with racism,” and likened the media to Hitler. The submit set off dueling protests at the very hot doggy stand. Nelson finally posted an apology for possessing set the assertion on the small business Facebook webpage as a substitute of his private one—but he does not disavow the language in the unique article and suggests he stands by it.
The incident prompted some other Pronto Pups to take note on social media that they were being all impartial corporations with no relation to just about every other. Just one was a food truck 30 miles away in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that pops up in brewery parking loads with community-beer-battered dogs, cheddar jalapeño sauce, and fried “pickle pups” made Michigan’s individual Brickman’s dill pickles and served with a “truck-manufactured” dill aioli.
Proprietor Andy Bogart purchased the truck in April 2020—at the time, he was jogging a foodstuff shipping and delivery small business that had just gotten five periods busier, and he was looking for one thing else that seemed pandemic-proof.


“Persons like their Pronto Pups,” Bogart claims of the address that is turn out to be a Michigan staple. He contracts with the area Kent Good quality Foods on a tailor made turkey-beef-pork dog and sells Detroit’s possess Faygo sodas, adding a nearby come to feel to the Oregon-born product. Bogart, a beer lover, suggests he’d love to make the trek from Grand Rapids to Oregon sometime, consider some regional brews, and meet Dave Sulmonetti. He’d undoubtedly head out to Pronto Pup’s birthplace in Rockaway, also.
“I want to trip the corn dog.”
