Eskimo Pie
On July 31, 1921, Christian Nelson of Onawa, Iowa, pitched the concept of mass producing a chocolate covered ice cream treat called the I-Scream Bar to Russell Stover. Seven companies had previously rejected the idea because the confection easily melted.
Stover went into partnership with Nelson and their agreement was signed on the letterhead of the Graham Ice Cream Company of Omaha. Stover renamed the I-Scream Bar to Eskimo Pie and took out the stick to make it a sandwich. Stover has also been credited, through his knowledge of chemistry, with devising the formula for the chocolate shell that hardens on exposure to cold and holds the ice cream contents within. Nelson patented the confection on January 24, 1922.
The Eskimo Pie immediately became so successful that the factory couldn't keep up with demand and the company licensed the formula to 1,500 manufacturers in exchange for a royalty of one cent per dozen sold. The treat was marketed under the brand of Russell Stover Company and by April 1922 The New York Times stated that the partners had received US$30,000 a week in royalties in the first year.
Following upon the success of the Eskimo Pie, competing manufacturers soon came up with similar but different processes for making frozen ice cream pies, and at one point Stover and Nelson were paying $4,000 per day in legal fees to defend their patent, a battle which they ultimately lost.
Read more about this topic: Russell Stover
Famous quotes related to eskimo pie:
“The man who invented Eskimo Pie made a million dollars, so one is told, but E.E. Cummings, whose verse has been appearing off and on for three years now, and whose experiments should not be more appalling to those interested in poetry than the experiment of surrounding ice-cream with a layer of chocolate was to those interested in soda fountains, has hardly made a dent in the doughy minds of our so-called poetry lovers.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)
“We all have bad days, of course, a secret that only makes us feel more guilty. But once my friends and I started telling the truth about how far we deviated from perfection, we couldn’t stop. . . . One mother admitted leaving the grocery store without her kids—’I just forgot them. The manager found them in the frozen foods aisle, eating Eskimo Pies.’”
—Mary Kay Blakely (20th century)