50 Fun Facts About Food Brands

Chemist Fredric Baur asked that some of his ashes be buried in the tube-shaped can he designed for which snack?

Pringles honoured the wish: on the way to the funeral home his children stopped to buy a can, briefly debated the flavour, and settled on Original for part of his ashes.

Nestlé is a Swiss giant, but its founder Henri Nestlé was born and trained as a pharmacist's apprentice in which country?

Germany: he was born Heinrich Nestle in Frankfurt in 1814 and became Henri Nestlé only after settling in Vevey; the surname means 'little nest', which is why he put a nest of birds in the logo.

Early bottles of 7 Up, Charles Leiper Grigg's lemon-lime soda, claimed to contain which drug?

Lithium citrate put the 'Lithiated' in the early label 7Up Lithiated Lemon Soda: Grigg reckoned the supposed health benefits of lithia, a drug now used to steady mood swings, would help it sell.

Starbucks took its name from Starbuck, the chief mate in which 1851 novel?

Moby-Dick supplied the name almost by accident: co-founder Gordon Bowker said the book had nothing to do with the coffee shop and the sound simply seemed right.

Reuben Mattus coined Häagen-Dazs in the Bronx to sound as if his ice cream came from which country?

Denmark was picked as a tribute to its treatment of Jews during World War II; the made-up words mean nothing in Danish, which has no umlaut ä.

Gatorade was developed in 1965 by Robert Cade's team for the sweating football players of which school?

University of Florida doctors mixed it for the school's Gators, hence the name, and after losing the 1967 Orange Bowl to them Georgia Tech's coach said: 'We didn't have Gatorade. That made the difference.'

Red Bull was adapted from Krating Daeng, a drink Dietrich Mateschitz found curing his jet lag in which country?

Thailand's Krating Daeng was launched by Chaleo Yoovidhya, and Mateschitz partnered with him to sell a Westernised version of the drink.

Betty Crocker, whose signature answered customers' baking letters to flour millers Washburn-Crosby from 1921, was what?

A fictional character: 'Crocker' honoured a retired executive, 'Betty' simply sounded friendly, and her signature was picked in a contest among the company's women employees.

Which soda, first served by pharmacist Charles Alderton at a Waco, Texas drugstore, is a year older than Coca-Cola?

Dr Pepper began as Alderton's attempt to bottle the smell of the drugstore's mingled fruit syrups, and before it had a name regulars simply asked him to shoot them a 'Waco'.

Yakult, the probiotic milk drink sold in tiny bottles, first went on sale in 1935 in which country?

Japan: microbiologist Minoru Shirota cultured the strain that bears his name in 1930, and the brand name was adapted from 'jahurto', the Esperanto word for yoghurt.

Indomie, the instant noodle brand launched in 1972 and also made in Nigeria since 1995, was created in which country?

Indonesia is in the name: 'Indo' plus 'mie', an old spelling of the local word for noodles. Nigeria took to it so strongly that its makers built Africa's largest instant-noodle factory there.

'Made in Scotland from girders' was the long-running slogan of which Scottish soft drink?

Irn-Bru was sold as Iron Brew until after the Second World War; the respelling came because the drink was never brewed, and its only iron is a trace of ammonium ferric citrate.

The image on every Marmite jar shows a 'marmite', which in French is a large, covered what?

Cooking pot is right: in French a marmite is a lidded pot for boiling and stewing, and the spread itself was first sold in small earthenware pots before moving to glass jars in the 1920s.

Dutch journalist Teun van de Keuken founded Tony's Chocolonely in 2005 as a protest against what in the cocoa trade?

Slavery and child exploitation on cocoa farms were the target, and 'Chocolonely' nods to van de Keuken feeling like the only person in the industry who cared.

Aunt Jemima pancake mix, sold as the first 'ready-mix' in 1889, was rebranded in 2021 under what name?

Pearl Milling Company revived the name of the St. Joseph, Missouri mill where the mix was first developed, after PepsiCo retired the Aunt Jemima branding.

Campbell's cans went red and white in 1898 after an executive admired the football kit of which Ivy League school?

Cornell's crisp carnelian red won over executive Herberton Williams, and the can he inspired later became an Andy Warhol pop-art icon.

Facing rival Marmite, Vegemite was renamed in 1928 with which pun, as in 'If Marmite, then …'?

Parwill, as in 'if Ma might, then Pa will', failed to catch on and the original name returned; sales only took off later, helped by competitions that gave away Pontiac cars.

The '-vril' in Bovril came from a life-giving substance in The Coming Race, an 1871 novel by which author?

Edward Bulwer-Lytton's Vril-ya were a superior race powered by an electromagnetic fluid called Vril, which John Lawson Johnston borrowed for his beef extract.

Milo, the malt drink Nestlé launched at the 1934 Sydney Royal Easter Show, takes its name from an ancient Greek what?

Athlete Milo of Croton was legendary for his power, and chemist Thomas Mayne wanted a 'completely balanced food drink' to match.

Ovaltine, long a favourite in Britain, was invented in 1904 as Ovomaltine in which country?

Switzerland: chemist Albert Wander created it in Bern, naming it for the egg (ovum) and malt in the recipe, and the name was trimmed to Ovaltine when it reached the British market.

India pulled Maggi 2 Minute Noodles from shelves in 2015 after state tests reported excess levels of what?

Lead was the finding from food inspectors in Uttar Pradesh; Nestlé disputed the tests but recalled the noodles nationwide, a debacle that cost it around half a billion dollars.

Vimto, created in Manchester in 1908 by herb and spice wholesaler John Noel Nichols, was first sold under what name?

Vim Tonic, or 'Vimtonic' in its maker's own history, was a herbal tonic meant to give drinkers vim and vigour, sold to cafes and temperance bars before the name was shortened.

Which US state's Senate declared Jell-O a favourite snack of the state in 2001?

Utah embraced the dessert that carpenter Pearle Wait devised in LeRoy, New York, in 1897; short of capital, he sold the trademark two years later for just $450.

Momofuku Ando, who invented instant noodles in 1958 and Cup Noodles in 1971, founded which Japanese company?

Nissin still makes Cup Noodles, and Ando's story, including his wife Masako's role, became a Japanese television drama.

Calpis, sold in America as Calpico, was inspired by soured milk its founder drank among herders in which region?

Inner Mongolia is where Kaiun Mishima found that the herders' soured milk restored his digestion; he launched Calpis in 1919, and the Calpico name is said to spare English speakers an unfortunate echo.

Shin Kyuk-ho named Lotte, founded in Tokyo in 1948, after Charlotte, the heroine of a novel by which author?

Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther so impressed the Korean-born founder that its heroine gave her name to a company now behind Lotteria and Lotte World.

Arnott's Tim Tam biscuits, launched in 1964, were named by Ross Arnott after a horse he saw win which 1958 race?

Kentucky Derby winner Tim Tam caught Ross Arnott's eye at the 1958 race; the biscuit itself came from a colleague's world trip that year, which ended with a vow to better Britain's Penguin bar.

Sanitarium, the company behind Australia and New Zealand's Weet-Bix, is wholly owned by which church?

Seventh-day Adventist ownership has a striking side effect: because the owner is a religious body, neither the Australian nor the New Zealand company pays company tax on its profits.

Danone is a French giant today, but Isaac Carasso founded it in 1919, naming it after his son, in which city?

Barcelona, not France, was the birthplace: Carasso was inspired by Nobel laureate Élie Metchnikoff's yoghurt research, and son Daniel took the brand to Paris in 1929.

Which tea company, owned by India's Tata since 2000, was first to sell tea bags in Britain, in 1953?

Tetley grew out of two Yorkshire brothers, Joseph and Edward, who started out selling salt, added tea to their wares and in time set up as tea merchants.

PG Tips adverts from 1956 starred the 'Tipps family', voiced by stars such as Peter Sellers, made up of which animals?

Chimpanzees dressed as humans, in the style of a zoo tea party, proved an instant hit: within two years of the first advert PG Tips had climbed from fourth place to Britain's best-selling tea.

Which tea firm, in the same shop on London's Strand since 1706, claims the world's oldest logo in continuous use?

Twinings began when Thomas Twining bought Tom's Coffee House on the Strand and was soon selling more dry tea than brewed; the logo over the door has been in use since 1787.

Kerrygold butter is owned by Ornua, an Irish dairy cooperative whose name means what in Irish?

New gold, from the Irish 'ór nua', replaced the plainer name Irish Dairy Board when the cooperative rebranded in 2015: ór is gold and nua is new.

Huy Fong's rooster-label Sriracha was launched in Los Angeles in 1980 by David Tran, an immigrant from which country?

Vietnam-born Tran named the firm after the Huey Fong, the Taiwanese freighter that carried him out of the country, and the rooster on the bottle is his own birth sign in the Chinese zodiac.

Lurpak butter, branded by Danish dairy farmers in 1901, takes its name and logo from the lur, an ancient what?

Brass instrument fits: the lur was a long curved horn of the Bronze Age, and the logo's crossed pair echoes how lurs are often found: in twos, laid in Danish bogs.

Nescafé was developed in the 1930s to use up a coffee surplus left by the 1929 crash in which country?

Brazil's cheap beans had piled up in the warehouses of the bank Sudameris, which asked Nestlé for a solution; Max Morgenthaler's team launched the coffee in 1938.

James L. Kraft, a Canadian-born wholesaler working in Chicago, patented what in 1916?

A way to sterilise cheese so it resisted spoiling let Kraft ship it long distances, putting him among the first to patent a processed cheese.

The Pillsbury Doughboy, who giggles when a finger pokes his belly, has what official name?

Poppin' Fresh was dreamed up in 1965 by Chicago adman Rudy Perz, who sat at his kitchen table and pictured a little dough figure popping out of a can of refrigerated dough.

Long before ketchup, the first product Henry Heinz bottled in 1869, from his mother's recipe, was what?

Horseradish, made to Anna Heinz's recipe, launched his first firm in Sharpsburg, Pennsylvania; sauerkraut, vinegar and pickles soon followed, but the ketchup did not arrive until 1876.

Spam's home town of Austin, nicknamed 'Spam Town USA', is not the Texas capital but a small city in which state?

Minnesota's Austin is where Hormel launched Spam in 1937 to sell more pork shoulder, a cut that did not move well on its own; the town now has a Spam Museum with free admission.

Wonder Bread's red, yellow and blue dots recall which sight that gave the brand its name in 1921?

Balloons filling the sky at a race over the Indianapolis Motor Speedway struck executive Elmer Cline with 'wonder'; in the 1930s the loaf he named became one of the first sold sliced across the country.

Green Giant's Le Sueur peas sell in Canada as 'Le Sieur', a spelling that avoids the French word 'sueur', meaning what?

Sweat is not a word you want on a tin of peas; Le Sueur is the town where the brand's canning company began in 1903.

Edwin Perkins made Kool-Aid in 1927 by drying his Fruit Smack concentrate to a powder in Hastings, in which state?

Nebraska's Hastings is where Perkins, inspired by Jell-O, replaced his bottled Fruit Smack with a powder he first spelled Kool-Ade; the state now counts it as its official soft drink.

Teetotal dentist Thomas Welch kept his 1869 communion grape juice from fermenting by borrowing which scientist's method?

Louis Pasteur's heat treatment, worked out to stop wine spoiling, let Welch bottle 'Dr. Welch's Unfermented Wine' so that his Methodist church could take communion without alcohol.

Sara Lee, whose name Charles Lubin gave to a cream cheesecake and then to his Chicago bakery firm, was his what?

Daughter Sara Lee was eight when her name went on the cheesecake in 1949; the food group that bought the bakery in 1956 later took her name for the whole corporation.

The dead lion and swarm of bees on Lyle's Golden Syrup tins illustrate a riddle posed by which biblical figure?

Samson found bees making honey in a lion he had killed, hence the tin's slogan 'Out of the strong came forth sweetness', chosen by Abram Lyle.

Alfred Bird devised Bird's Custard powder in Birmingham in 1837 because his wife was allergic to what?

Eggs thicken traditional custard, so Bird used cornflour instead; fellow diners liked it so much he put the recipe into production.

Hovis, the name that won an 1890 competition and its £25 prize, comes from the Latin 'hominis vis', meaning what?

The strength of man was Herbert Grime's winning entry, a welcome replacement for the flour's clumsy first name, Smith's Patent Process Germ Flour.

Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield opened an ice cream parlour in 1978 in Burlington, Vermont, in a renovated what?

Gas station premises and a $12,000 stake launched Ben & Jerry's; the pair had learned the trade from a Penn State correspondence course.

In 1759 Arthur Guinness signed a lease on Dublin's St James's Gate brewery at £45 a year for how long?

9,000 years at £45 a year was the deal, though the company has since bought the site outright and once owned most of the surrounding streets.