Ever Wonder...

Where the first sliced bread and other famous foods got their names?

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It wasn't the best thing since sliced bread. It was the first sliced bread sold nationally, period. Consumers had long been slicing bread themselves (the alternative being to simply gnaw on the loaf), and any store-bought bread before the late 1920s was unsliced.

But even Wonder Bread wasn't sliced at first. Created in 1921 by the Taggart Baking Company of Indianapolis, Indiana, the new bread was almost ready for market when the question of a name arose. Vice president Elmer Cline happened to attend a balloon race one day. The sight of dozens of brightly colored hot-air balloons in the sky filled him with, as he later said, "wonder." Wonder Bread was born without further ado. Cline, in fact, was so impressed with the sight of those balloons that he covered his new product's wrapper with red, yellow and blue balloons (still the Wonder package design today).

You might think that a product combining balloons, bread and a sense of wonder couldn't get any better. But in 1933 Wonder introduced the very first pre-sliced loaf of bread to America's consumers, the popularity of which is reflected in that phrase "the best thing since sliced bread."

Birds Eye The logo of a leading maker of frozen foods features a stylized bird with a prominent eye. But the brand name has little to do with birds. Muskrats, maybe.

Born in Brooklyn in 1886, Clarence Birdseye -- one word -- spent his summers on a Long Island farm. At age ten, he combined his love of the outdoors with a little free enterprise: He trapped and sold muskrats, then used the proceeds to buy a shotgun. A few years later, strapped for cash while at Amherst College, Clarence began selling rats to a Columbia University scientist. Eventually he made a discovery: Fish and game frozen quickly in winter tasted better than those frozen more slowly in milder weather.

In 1923, he froze rabbit and fish fillets in candy boxes, using dry ice. Soon he established the General Seafoods Company to further market his foods. A few years later, he sold the company to General Foods, which changed the brand name "Birdseye" to "Birds Eye." Clarence favored the change, noting that "Birds Eye" was the original form of his family name: An ancestor had saved the life of an English queen by shooting an attacking hawk in the eye.

Altoids These peppermint lozenges in the little tins were introduced in 19th-century London not as breath fresheners but as a remedy for indigestion. One ad run by Smith & Company, the manufacturer, even made it clear that having dinner without Altoids on hand was courting gastric disaster: "One or two taken after meals will stop any poisonous fermentation."

Altoids were originally sold through pharmacies. Smith & Company tacked the scientific-sounding oid suffix (from the Greek, meaning "in the form of") onto their product, and the alt is said by the manufacturer to derive from the Latin word for "change." A more logical source would be the Latin altus or "high," making Altoid equivalent to "the highest or best oid." Still made in Britain, Altoids were introduced here in the 1980s. Their popularity is due in part to a quirky ad campaign in 1995: "Nice Altoids!"

Pringles When it came to naming their new potato snack product in the late 1960s, the marketing folks at Procter & Gamble thought, Why not look at names that already exist? Pulling out the phone book for their hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, they began skimming. In time, they hit the jackpot. In the suburb of Finneytown, they found a street named Pringle Drive.

Pringle...Potato. That was it!

Perfectly round Pringles Potato Crisps hit America in 1968, stacked in a distinctive cylindrical can. Today they come in a range of flavors, and there are even Pringles-inspired tortilla chips, Torengos, which are perfectly triangular and come in -- what else? -- a long triangular can.

Sara Lee It was a catchy slogan set to a catchy tune (penned by Mitch Leigh, of Man of La Mancha fame) when it was introduced in 1968: "Everybody doesn't like something, but nobody doesn't like Sara Lee." It's still considered one of the most successful ad jingles ever. But it never told who Sara Lee was.

As it happens, Sara Lee was the daughter of Charles Lubin, owner of a chain of bakeries in Chicago in the 1930s. Lubin tested his recipes on her, and eventually renamed his business The Kitchens of Sara Lee. In the 1950s, the company pioneered the sales of frozen baked desserts. Today, in addition to its bakery line, it also owns a slew of other brands, including Hanes, Bali, Wonderbra and Playtex, Kiwi shoe-care products, and Brylcreem.

Aside from appearing in a few television commercials, Sara Lee hasn't played a role in the company. She's now a grandmother and a philanthropist living on the East Coast.

Milk Duds At least they didn't call them Milk Screw-Ups. When Chicago candy maker F. Hoffman & Company set out to market chocolate-covered caramels in the early 1900s, it decided to aim high and make them perfectly spherical little balls. Hoffman's chefs soon discovered that their perfect little chocolate caramel balls always came out as little chocolate caramel lumps. Hoffman decided to market this lumpy candy anyway. The company picked the name Milk Duds, referring to the high milk content and less-than-perfect shape. Turns out the public wasn't looking for geometric perfection. Milk Duds, now made by Hershey Foods, were an immediate hit.

Fig Newtons Only the cookies made by Nabisco are, legally speaking, Fig Newtons. All the rest are just "fig bars."

One popular theory says that Fig Newtons were named after Isaac Newton. Alas, no such luck. The first Fig Newtons were baked in 1892 by the Kennedy Biscuit Works of Massachusetts. Back then, baked goods were often named for the local bakery that made them. So the folks at Kennedy Biscuit, which later merged into what would become Nabisco, looked to the locale for ideas. Fig Newtons thus immortalize the Boston suburb of Newton, Massachusetts.

Twinkies For an innocent snack food, Twinkies get no respect. A website called The Twinkies Project even purports to investigate the effect on Twinkies of, among other tortures, being doused with flaming alcohol and tossed from a sixth-floor window. The "researchers" claim that the name of their project stands for Tests With Inorganic Noxious Kakes In Extreme Situations.

Noxious? Twinkies are made with standard ingredients -- milk, eggs, etc. -- and are baked. Aficionados point out that the little golden tube cakes were developed during the Depression by Jimmy Dewar, manager of the Hostess bakery in Schiller Park, Illinois, at a time when inexpensive treats were hard to come by.

But Dewar still needed a name. That's when divine intervention (to hear Twinkies fans tell it) appeared. While on his way to show his bosses his new creation, Dewar spotted a billboard for "Twinkle Toe Shoes."

And just like that, the name Twinkies was born.

From Reader's Digest - January 2006

 

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