Well I went to the libraries in town and none of them had popular mechanics or popular science going back that far. However, digging through some other older magazines, I did see some cool soda advertisements (lots of 7-up ads for some reason.) However, I did discover that google books now lets you search through old magazines. You want to click on the advanced tab and then set it to search just magazines. You can also specify what date range you want.
I didn't find the article I was looking for in the 1954 to 1956 year ranges, but I did find a similar article in the September 1954 issue of Popular Mechanics.
http://books.google.com/books?id=AeADAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA165&dq=breakfast+nook+date:1954-1955&lr=&num=100&as_brr=0&as_pt=MAGAZINESI'm really glad Google added this feature.
