The Girl on the Milk Carton: Why did kids' photos appear on milk cartons in the 1980s? Explained 

The Girl on the Milk Carton, a docuseries from Oxygen, will be released on Sunday, August 25, 2024. It dwells on the gripping real-life story of Jonelle Mathews, a young girl from Colorado who went missing from her home on December 20, 1984. She became one of the first missing kids whose face was printed on milk cartons to publicize her disappearance.

Her remains were accidentally found 35 years later on July 24, 2019, by construction workers who were installing a pipeline in an area 24 km away from her family's former home. As per NBC News, her cause of death was established as a gunshot wound to the head.

Jonelle's case shocked the entire nation and brought attention to the issue of missing children. The Girl on the Milk Carton will follow the journey of her family in the face of tragedy as they seek answers. It also explores the story of how and why missing kids' photos would show up on the side of milk cartons during the 1980s.

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The context behind 'The Girl on the Milk Carton'

In the 1980s, images of missing children were plastered on the side of milk cartons in the hopes that people would come across these pictures and spread the word, which may lead to their discovery.

This began as a local effort in Iowa in 1984 when Anderson Erickson Dairy, the largest independently owned dairy in Iowa, ran photos and short bios of two missing boys, Johnny Gosch and Eugene Martin, on half-gallon milk cartons. This idea spread and other dairies from across the country started doing the same.

Later that year, the National Child Safety Council, a non-profit, launched the Missing Children Milk Carton Program and worked with 700 hundred dairies from across the nation to take part in it.

The docuseries The Girl on the Milk Carton covers this innovative awareness campaign.

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Was the program successful? Why did it end?

It’s hard to know how many kids were found as a result of the milk carton posters. However, some specific cases proved the program's success. In October 1985, seven-year-old Bonnie Bullock, who was taken to Colorado by her mother via noncustodial abduction, was reunited with her father after she saw her photo on a milk carton. Bullock showed it to a friend who told her parents, who then alerted the police.

By the late 1980s, the milk carton campaigns began to fade out. The invention of the Amber Alert system in 1996 and the discontinuation of milk cartons started making the practice obsolete.

Another reason, why the program lost support was because it reportedly made people upset. John E. Bischoff III, an executive at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), told Oxygen.com:

"It stopped for a couple of different reasons — one was because some people saw it as bringing sadness to the breakfast table”

Others felt it was debilitating for young children to see the missing kids on milk cartons before heading off to school.

Regardless of its direct efficiency in the discovery of the missing kids, the milk carton program managed to bring the issue of kids' safety into the mainstream.

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Catch The Girl on the Milk Carton tomorrow on Oxygen.