Good Humor

Good Humor is a Good Humor-Breyers brand of ice cream started with Harry Burt in Youngstown, Ohio, US, in the early 1920s with the Good Humor bar, a chocolate-coated ice cream bar on a stick sold from ice cream trucks and retail outlets. It was a fixture in American popular culture in the 1950s when the company operated up to 2,000 "sales cars". History The original Good Humor company started in Youngstown, Ohio, during the early 1920s and covered most of the country by the mid-1930s. In 1961, Good Humor was acquired by Thomas J. Lipton, the U.S. subsidiary of the international Unilever conglomerate. Profits declined when the baby boomers aged and costs increased because of labor issues, gasoline, and insurance. The company sold its fleet in 1978 but continued to distribute its products through grocery stores and independent street vendors. By 1984, Good Humor returned to profitability. Starting in 1989, Unilever expanded Good Humor through its acquisition of Gold Bond Ice Cream that included the Popsicle brand. Four years later, Unilever bought Isaly Klondike and the Breyers Ice Cream Company. As a result, Good Humor-Breyers is now a large producer of branded ice cream and frozen novelties, as part of the international Unilever Heartbrand. 1920s In 1919, Christian Nelson, an Iowa store owner, discovered how to coat an ice cream bar with chocolate, inventing the Eskimo Pie. When he heard of the discovery, Harry Burt (1875–1926), owner of a Youngstown, Ohio, ice cream parlor, replicated Nelson's product. The story is that Burt's 23-year-old daughter Ruth thought that the new novelty was too messy. Burt's son, Harry Jr. (1900–1972), suggested using a wooden stick as a convenient handle. They tried out the idea in the store's hardening room, where they discovered that the stick formed a strong bond when the ice cream crystallized. Burt outfitted twelve street vending trucks in Youngstown with rudimentary freezers and bells to sell his "Good Humor Ice Cream Suckers" in 1920. The first set was from his son's old bobsled. By 1925, Harry Burt Jr. opened a franchise in Miami, Florida.