We really commend Matthew Weiner & Co. for placing so much importance on the finer details in Mad Men, but even a crack team can make mistakes. On Sunday's episode Don Draper brought a cake to Rachel Menken's shiva, and it came in a pink box. There was some discussion over whether or not this is accurate, because apparently pink boxes are a West Coast thing.

@BoweryBoys I think it's another West Coast mistake. Cake boxes out east aren't pink. Common TV mixup. Unexpected on Mad Men. — cjstephens (@cjstephens) April 6, 2015

To be clear, we don't really care if the box Don was carrying was historically accurate, but we decided to investigate anyway, since we had never heard of this regional pink box thing.

First we reached out the NYPL, asking for any information on pink bakery boxes in New York City. Rebecca Federman, the culinary librarian, was unable to find anything regarding pink bakery boxes in New York during her initial search. Currently she is checking some journals, and we'll update if she finds anything, specifically when the first pink bakery box was used here.

Next up, we contacted the Mad Men team, because there was writing on the box Don was carrying, which was not legible, but given their attention to detail must have had the name of an actual bakery on it. And it did. This morning we were told that "Prop Master Ellen Freund chose Glaser's Bake Shop in New York as the place the pink box was from. Glaser's has been open since 1902 and still open today located at 1670 First Avenue at 87th Street."



(Courtesy of Glaser's)

We called Glaser's to find out if they ever had pink boxes. We were told no, they've only ever had white boxes, and the only time these boxes were even slightly changed was when they briefly added green writing. Glaser's has always had, and still has, white boxes only.

This seems to be a common mistake in Hollywood, where the Pepto-hued boxes have been around for a long time. In an old issue of LA Magazine, it was pointed out that the pink boxes are "not a tribute to Angelyne. Cambodians fleeing the Khmer Rouge in the late 1970s arrived in large numbers in Southern California, where they were recruited by Win-chell’s. At the time the coated, greaseproof boxes that held the pastries were costly and came in white, the color of mourning in Cambodia. So the immigrants found a company, Evergreen in Cerritos, that made the boxes cheaper and uncoated in pink."

Of course, the pink box has made its way to bakeries all over the world at this point, and are frequently found holding cupcakes here in New York today.