Photo: mihoda/Flickr
On March 6 in…
1912
Nabisco debuts the Oreo cookie.
1930
Birdseye frozen foods go on sale for the first time.
The Backstory
The Oreo
That’s the best-selling cookie in the U.S. (and now China) pictured up there. Over 400,00 billion have been sold since its debut, 100 years ago today, in Nabisco’s Chelsea factory in NYC. The initial price for Oreos? 25 cents/lb.
The design of the original Oreo is similar to today’s cookie, with OREO appearing front and center from its chocolaty onset. Sixty years ago today, in 1952, a new design was introduced including the Nabisco (NAtional BIscuit COmpany) logo. We’ve been eating our Oreos this way ever since.
If you’re a die-hard Oreo fan, this article from The Atlantic musing over the cookie’s semiotics might interest you. Otherwise, if all that putative symbolism is just too much for you, keep it simple: dunk, twist or bite as you normally do. Happy Birthday, dear Oreo.
Birds Eye Frozen Foods
Don’t let this unsettle you, but Clarence Birdseye was a taxidermist by trade. Luckily, he also appreciated fresh food, and wanted it year-round.
In 1923, with an investment of $7 (read: electric fan, buckets of brine and cakes of ice), Clarence Birdseye invented, developed and commercialized a way to quick-freeze different kinds of food, retaining their original flavor.
Wall Street took notice. In 1929 the Goldman-Sachs Trading Corporation partnered with the Postum Company (later the General Foods Corporation) to buy Birdseye’s patents and trademarks for a cool $22 million. The following year, quick-frozen vegetables, fruits, seafoods and meat were sold to the public for the first time in Springfield, Massachusetts. A household name for frozen foods was born: Birds Eye.