1939 - Food And Drink

Food And Drink

General Foods introduces the first precooked frozen foods under the Birds Eye label, marketing a chicken fricasee and criss-cross steak (see 1931). Competitors come out within the year with "frosted" creamed chicken, beef stew, and roast turkey.

A new 5-minute Cream of Wheat competes with quick-cooking Quaker Oats, which reduced its cooking time in 1922 from 15 minutes to 5.

Elsie the Cow appears at the New York World's Fair (see 1936). The bovine trademark helps Borden Co. to establish national awareness.

The pressure cooker introduced at the New York World's Fair by National Presto Industries is a saucepan-like pot with a locking swivel lid (see 1681). It does in minutes what used to take hours.

Lay's Potato Chips are introduced by Atlanta's H. W. Lay Co., founded by Herman Warden Lay, 30; he has taken over Barrett Food Products, for which he was a route salesman in 1932 (see Frito-Lay, 1961).

Pepsi-Cola challenges Coca-Cola with a radio jingle written for $2,500 by Bradley Kent and Austen Herbert Croom to the old English hunting song "D'ye Ken John Peel": "Pepsi-Cola hits the spot/ Twelve full ounces, that's a lot/ Twice as much for a nickel, too/ Pepsi-Cola is the drink for you." Coca-Cola remains dependent on visual imagery, it has nothing to counter the catchy Pepsi jingle, and Pepsi's net earnings for the year reach $5.6 million, up from $2 million in 1936 (see 1959).

G. F. Heublein & Bro. of Hartford, Conn., acquires rights to Smirnoff Vodka for $14,000 (see Smirnoff, 1818). Heublein boss John G. Martin, 33, employs Russian émigré Rudolph Kunett, whose Smirnoff Co. has been grossing $36,000 per year but is close to bankruptcy (see 1948).

China consumes about 900 million pounds of tea, the United Kingdom about 469 million, India 111, the United States 97, Japan 75, Russia 63, Australia 51, Canada 43, the Netherlands 29, Eire 23, the Dutch East Indies 21.