"I'm astounded by people who take 18 years to write something. That's how long it took that guy to write 'Madame Bovary,' and was that ever on the best-seller list?"
As Alice Ziplinsky notes in True Confections, the brand and image connection between comforting foods and jolly black people is an old and and persistent one, especially in France. Here's another example I had not heard of before now, "Negrocao," a portmanteau brand name presumably consisting of Negro + cacao. The word "Negronoir" is also made up, sort of blackblack. Love the cup and saucer hat. Note the white-bearded Caucasian gent (he looks like Matisse or Freud) offering a steaming cup of this product to a delighted doll-like Caucasian child.
Ancient writing (at first pictographic in nature) is best known from clay and stone inscriptions, but the use of perishable materials, mainly palm leaf, papyrus, and paper, began in ancient times.