Grape Nuts
It’s not made from grapes and it contains no nuts. So what’s up with Grape-Nuts cereal? It all goes back to C. W. Post’s ideas about what was wrong with the average human diet.
In 1892, Charles William Post, then only 38 years old, was concerned about his health, especially his chronically upset stomach. So he checked himself into the Battle Creek Sanitarium (run by Dr. John Harvey Kellogg, of Kellogg Cereals fame) in Michigan. During his stay, Post became convinced that Kellogg’s “pure food” theories were correct, and after leaving the sanitarium set up his own medical boarding house and farm and set about developing a line of healthy grain-based foods.
Post’s first product was Postum, a wheat-based coffee substitute, followed in 1897 by Grape-Nuts, a blend of wheat and malted barley cereals (that just happened to make use of the wheat bran removed in the manufacture of Postum). Post marketed both Postum and Grape-Nuts under the slogan “There’s a Reason,” and though he never specifically explained what that reason might be, he did include a copy of his healthy-eating tract “The Road to Wellville” in each box of Grape-Nuts. Post’s pamphlet, not surprisingly, advised people to drink lots of Postum, fill up on Grape-Nuts, and think positive thoughts.
Though Postum has remained largely a niche product in the years since, Grape-Nuts have been a consistently strong seller in the highly competitive breakfast cereals market. As for the odd name, Post once explained that “grape sugar” was formed during the baking process, and the finished cereal had a “nutty” taste. Voila (more or less), “Grape Nuts.”
Kool-Aid
There seems to be some dispute as to whether Edwin Perkins was 12 or 14 years old when he had his idea, but it was a doozie.
Young Edward had sent away for a mail-order “start your own business” kit, and quickly set about inventing a variety of flavorings and perfumes in his mother’s kitchen. Unlike many youthful experimenters, Perkins kept at it, year after year, and by 1914, at age 24, he was operating his own mail-order business, selling a soft drink syrup mix he called “Fruit Smack.”
But the Fruit Smack bottles were expensive to mail and often arrived damaged, so Perkins decided that product modifications were called for.
The solution, as it happened, was as close as his father’s general store, where sales of the new Jell-O dry dessert mix were booming. Perkins stopped selling the liquid Fruit Smack and began selling a concentrated drink-mix powder, which he at first called “Kool-Ade,” modeling the name on “lemonade.” But to Perkins, the “ade” suffix had medicinal overtones, so he changed the name to “Kool-Aid,” which conveniently carried a connotation of “aiding” drinkers in remaining cool.
The original flavors of Kool-Aid were Cherry, Lemon-Lime, Grape, Orange, Root Beer, Strawberry, and Raspberry. Today more than 563 million gallons of Kool-Aid are consumed every year.
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, they decided to aim high and make them perfectly spherical little balls. Unfortunately, Hoffman’s chefs soon discovered that, try as they might, their perfect little chocolate caramel balls always came out little chocolate caramel lumps. Hoffman & Co. decided to market their lumpy candy anyway, and picked the name “Milk Duds,” referring to their high milk content and their less-than-perfect shape. Fortunately, the public wasn’t looking for geometric perfection in candy, and Milk Duds were an immediate hit. Now produced by Hershey Foods, Milk Duds have been popular ever since.