Dream Whip

In 1925, Kraft Food acquired the Jell-O Company. During the 1950s, the Walter Baker Company, under the Jell-O Division, continued to produce cocoa, chocolate and instant chocolate drink, Dream Whip and chocolate chips as well as bulk chocolate and cocoas that were sold to the baking, ice cream and candy industries.

Kraft Foods introduced Dream Whip Topping mix in 1957, nearly decade earlier than Cool Whip.  It was one of the convenience products that flooded the market at that time.  Cool Whip was probably marketed by Birds Eye to compete with Kraft’s Dream Whip Topping Mix.

Dream Whip was introduced in the powdered form, is the leader among the dry packaged whips, while Lever Bros. Lucky Whip mix, introduced in 1961, is considered in second place. Lucky Whip is also sold in aerosol containers, as is Whip Topping.

In 1988, Philip Morris acquired Kraft and combined it with General Foods to form Kraft General Foods in 1989.
Dream Whip

History of Jell-O

Jell-O is the brand name of a dessert mix of colored and favored sugar and crystallized gelatin, made by Kraft Foods, Inc.

Gelatin was prepared long before Jell-O was introduced in 1897.  The quivering gelatin was originally patented in 1845 as a packaged dessert with instructions by American inventor, philanthropist, and industrialist Peter Copper. It was Pearle Bixby Wait of Le Roy in 1897, however, who jazzed up the gelatin with color and flavor to create a stand-alone dessert mix.

Wait was a carpenter and cough medicine manufacturer who was always looking for ways to supplement his income.

It is said that Wait first formulated this popular dessert at his kitchen table and Wait’s wife, May named the product Jell-O by attaching to the word ‘jell’ the ‘O’ a popular ending for product names at the time.

In 1899, Jell-O went into production, and the first four flavors - strawberry, raspberry, orange and lemon – rolled off the line.

Over the next sixty-five years Jell-O and Le Roy became synonymous as the kitchen- table recipe conquered the world.

In 1899, the Jell-O Company was bought by Orator Woodward of Genesee Pure Food for $450, whose pioneering marketing, advertising, and name recognition campaigns are still studied and copied today.

Two years later Woodward introduced Jell-O Girl and sent horse-drawn wagons to rural communities to promote the new product.

In 1902, the company produced the first of a subsequent flood of Jell-O recipe booklet. Woodward died in 1906, and within a year Jell-O was grossing $1 million a year.

By 1923, sales so dominated the Genesee Pure Food Company that the firm’s name changed to the Jell-O Company. In 1925 the company was sold to a Postum for an exchange of stock valued at $84 million.
History of Jell-O