SWEET TOOTH
The Quick Quirk Quiz
The Surprising Stories, Hidden History,
and Unusual Origins Behind Familiar Things
By Janet Spencer, Trivia Queen of the Universe
Royal Ruler of Useless Information
Master of Arcane Knowledge & Extraneous Lore
Keeper of Forgotten Facts & Startling Statistics
Published by Janet Spencer at Smashwords.com
Copyright 2009 Janet Spencer
Discover other works by Janet Spencer at
www.smashwords.com/profile/view/triviaqueen
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cheesecake Child
Snack Cake Kid
A New Treat
Ice Cream Invention
A Better Wrapper
Fine Chocolate
Ice Cream on Wheels
Epperson Icicle
A Long Shelf Life
A Sweet Root
Chocolateville
The Peanut Butter Guy
California Gold
Elegant Eats
Bird’s Nest Chocolate
A New Cookie
Cocoa & Easter Eggs
Toffee Delight
A French General
An Enterprising Man
Cardboard Candies
Lumpy Chocolate
Chocolate Taffy
A Small Mint
A Healthy Cracker
Quince Jelly
Valuable Spice
A Neat Bean
Cheesecake Child
In 1932 Charles Lubin and his brother-in-law purchased a chain of bakeries in Chicago called the Community Bake Shops. The business was successful, but in 1949 Charles and his brother-in-law parted ways and Charles took over the business. He believed that because the business had been so successful in supplying baked goods to the grocery stores of Chicago, he should try supplying baked goods to the mass market of America, so he began to experiment with ways to do that. He invented a method that allowed desserts to be baked, frozen, shipped, and reheated in a foil pan. His first mass-market product was a frozen cheesecake, which needed a name. His wife Tillie suggested he name it after their daughter, and he did. The cheesecake became so popular that he renamed the entire corporation after his daughter. He added more products such as pound cake and coffee cake, and by 1955 his products were sold all over the country. The business was so profitable that Charles sold out to Consolidated Foods in 1956. By then the name of his daughter was so widely recognized that Consolidated Foods adopted it as the new name of their corporation, hiring him to be their CEO. Charles retired in 1965 and died in 1988, by which time the company’s products were well on their way to being sold around the world. What was the name of Charles’ daughter?
Answer: Sarah Lee.
Snack Cake Kid
O.D. McKee and his wife Ruth were newly married in the middle of the Great Depression when they lost their life savings in a bank failure. He got a job as a deliveryman for a local bakery in Tennessee, but he really wanted to own his own shop. When a small failing bakery went up for sale in 1934, they used their car as collateral and bought it, living in the back of the store. By 1934 they were able to afford a second shift of employees, and they spent the next several decades doggedly building their business as their family grew. McKee discovered that baked products which were individually wrapped would keep longer and stay fresher than those that were packaged in bulk in bags or jars, so he adapted candy-wrapping machines to wrap cookies, bars, and cupcakes. In 1960 they created a new brand for their company, naming it after their four-year-old granddaughter. For the logo they used a picture of the child wearing her favorite outfit, complete with a straw hat with a crease in the brim where she stepped on it. The individually-wrapped cakes were now sold in multi-packs and the company began a period of prodigious growth. Meanwhile, their little granddaughter grew up to become the company’s director of marketing. The company named after the grandchild now dominates the snack cake market. What was the name of their granddaughter?
Answer: Little Debbie.
A New Treat
Continental Bakeries made a variety of items under the Hostess brand in the 1920s and 1930s. One of them was a strawberry shortcake, composed of a single-serving oblong sponge cake injected with strawberry cream filling. The problem was that strawberries were a seasonal item, available only a few months of the year. The rest of the year, the equipment used to make the cakes sat idle. While delivering a load of strawberry cakes to a vendor one day, company vice-president James Deware decided what he needed was a product that would use this equipment all year. Finally he hit on banana cream cakes because bananas were available year-round. He called them Little Shortcake Fingers, and a nickel bought a package of two. A few years later on the way to a marketing meeting, his eye fell on a billboard advertising a brand of shoes, and he adapted that name for the product. Originally the cakes were made with eggs, milk, and butter, which gave them a shelf life of only a day or two before becoming stale. It was expensive to have salesmen constantly replenishing store shelves, so the recipe was reformulated, giving them a shelf life of three to four weeks, mostly due to the airtight cellophane packaging. During World War II a banana shortage led to the need to re-vamp the recipe once again, and the familiar vanilla-flavored snack cake was born. Today, 500 million are produced every year. What are they called?
Answer: Twinkies.
Christian Nelson operated a candy store and ice cream shop in Iowa. One day a boy couldn’t decide whether to buy a candy bar or ice cream. That made Christian wonder why you couldn’t combine both. Experimenting, he discovered that cocoa butter would glue chocolate covering to a disk of ice cream. He called it the ‘I-Scream Bar’, test-marketed it at the firemen’s picnic, and it was a success. He tried to license the right to produce the new treat to dairies, but they weren’t interested. In 1922 he went to a man named Russell who managed the Graham Ice Cream Company, who agreed to pay half the cost of a patent in exchange for half the profits. Russell’s wife suggested a new name for the product, which conjured up Alaska. To package the ice cream bar, they wrapped it in tin foil. When the product hit the market, it caused a frenzy, selling a million a day. The company became the biggest consumer of tin foil in the nation. To meet demand, they licensed dairies to make the product in exchange for a royalty, but some dairies failed to pay royalties while others infringed on the patent. Then a judge ruled that it was not something that could be patented anyway. A demoralized Russell sold his part of the company and used the money to start his own candy company. Christian sold his part of the company to the tin foil firm, but continued to work for them. The product is still popular today. What’s it called?