The History of Good Humor

The Good Humor story starts in Ohio in 1920, when confectioner Harry Burt created a chocolate coating that was compatible with ice cream. His daughter taste-tasted the resulting treat and liked the flavor, but thought the coating was just too messy to enjoy. Burt’s son recalled the sticks used to make an earlier creation of Burt’s, Jolly Boy Suckers, and suggested freezing the sticks directly into the chocolate-coated ice cream bars to create a handle. The result? The creation of the Good Humor bar. Why the name? It was a play on the belief that a person’s humor, or temperament, was related to the “humor” of their palate (a person’s sense of taste). Shortly after creating the Good Humor bar with his family, Burt outfitted 12 street vending trucks with freezers and bells and began using them to sell his frozen treats to the public. Burt waited three years for his patent; when it was taking too long, he traveled to Washington, D.C. and brought along some Good Humor bars for the patent officials to try. His samples won them over and he was granted his patent in 1923. In 1929, a new Good Humor plant opened in Chicago, but after Good Humor refused to pay protection money to the local mob, part of the Chicago delivery fleet was destroyed. The 1930s saw the rise of the “Good Humor Man,” an officially trained salesman who operated one of the company’s many delivery vehicles. It took 3 days of training to become a Good Humor Man and orientation included instructions to always tip one’s hat to ladies and salute gentlemen. Unlike many other businesses, Good Humor thrived during the Great Depression because ice cream was one of the few indulgences that Americans could afford. And the growth didn’t stop there — by 1960, there were over 85 Good Humor ice cream products. But in 1975, New York City charged Good Humor with hundreds of counts of falsifying food safety records in order to hide evidence of bacteria in the products. In 1978, partially in response to New York City’s charges as well as several other factors, Good Humor sold its fleet of vehicles and chose to focus exclusively on grocery store sales. In 1992, some of the older, “classic” products like Candy Crunch, Chocolate Eclair, Strawberry Shortcake, and Toasted Almond were brought back to market (and they continue to be popular to this day!). Today, Good Humor remains one of the best-known names in the ice cream world and their products are beloved by generations of Americans.