Good Humor® History
In 1920, Harry Burt, a Youngstown, Ohio candy maker, created a special treat called the Jolly Boy Sucker, a lollypop on a stick. That same year, while working in his ice cream parlor, Burt created a smooth chocolate coating that was compatible with ice cream. It tasted great, but the new combination was too messy to eat. As a solution, Burt’s son, Harry Jr., suggested freezing the wooden sticks, used for Jolly Boy Suckers, into the ice cream. It worked!
The First Ice Cream On A Stick
To market his new product, Burt sent out a fleet of 12 chauffeur-driven trucks, all with bells. The Good Humor® bar was an immediate success in Youngstown. Customers liked that the ice cream was on a stick, and the Good Humor® men in their white uniforms promoted a clean, wholesome, and trustworthy image.
The Road To Becoming An American Icon
In 1930, a New York businessman and investor by the name of M.J. Meehan acquired the national rights to the company by buying 75 percent of the shares. The Meehan family owned the company until 1961 when it was sold to Unilever’s U.S. subsidiary, the Thomas J. Lipton Company.
Unilever’s Lipton Foods unit continued to manufacture and market Good Humor® products for the next 12 years. In 1976, when the company's direct-selling business was disbanded in favor of grocery stores and free-standing freezer cabinets, the trucks were parked for the last time. Some of the trucks were purchased by ice cream distributors while others were sold to private individuals.
In 1989, Unilever purchased Gold Bond Ice Cream, located in Green Bay, Wis., and grouped its U.S. ice cream and frozen novelty businesses under the name Gold Bond-Good Humor Ice Cream. With its acquisition of Breyers® Ice Cream in 1993, the company name was changed to Good Humor-Breyers® Ice Cream.