"Jiffy Pop, Jiffy Pop, the magic treat! As much fun to make as it is to eat!"
We kids of the 60's were serenaded by that chorus several times each Saturday morning as we watched our favorite cartoon shows. We were shown images of happy kids popping Jiffy Pop on a stove with that amazing bubble of aluminum foil rising expectantly until, finally, it was torn open and the most delicious looking popcorn the world has ever seen was revealed.
The next time we would accompany our mothers to the grocery store, we would beg for Jiffy Pop.
My frugal, practical father wouldn't allow it. He would point out that you could get a whole bag of popcorn for less than one single Jiffy Pop. But, mom would relent occasionally, and I would be allowed to create my own magical aluminum bubble full of popcorn.
Jiffy Pop was invented in 1958 by Fred Mennen. For five years he worked to create a self-contained system which would be perfect for popping a special yellow hulless hybrid corn which grew near his home in La Porte, Indiana. The next year, he began marketing it, and by 1960 it was being sold nationally.
TV commercials helped its popularity spread like wildfire, as those millions of Boomer kids begged their parents to buy them the popcorn that's as much fun to make as it is to eat.
Jiffy Pop is still around, but its sales are way down from its peak years. It's manufactured by ConAgra foods, along with a whole slew of other products.
Here's hoping it's not phased out by the megacorporation that produces it. We've lost enough connections with our childhoods. In the meantime, the next time you're in the supermarket, you might pick up a Jiffy Pop and see if it takes you back about forty or so years.
Comments (3)
Everytime I tried to make Jiffy(pre-microwave) as a kid, I always burned the entire
thing. Not unlike nuking Microwave popcorn. Isn't it funny how fast microwave popcorn has etched on our consciousness?
How many times have we smelled the residue of the smell in breakrooms
at work right after somehow popped a bag?
Posted by scott | July 15, 2007 11:04 PM
Posted on July 15, 2007 23:04
I never had much luck with Jiffy Pop either as I at least burned a portion of it which gave the rest of the batch an unpleasant taste. It wasn't too long ago I was popping the Jolly Time popcorn which came as just a bag of kernels. I still have a special pot with an agitator built into it to stir the kernels which sat in a shallow layer of oil at the bottom so they wouldn't burn.
I remember popcorn cooking evolving in the 1970s and 1980s. My Mom had a Scovill popcorn popper whic was endorsed by Joe Namath in the early 1970s. When I was in college in the early/mid 1980s, almost every student had a hot air popper in their dorm room. Nowadays, just about all popcorn is microwaved. I always found 2 minutes and forty seconds is the perfect time to cook microwave popcorn regardless of the brand.
Posted by Mike | December 30, 2007 10:25 PM
Posted on December 30, 2007 22:25
Yeah, I have to say, we didn't have much luck with Jiffy Pop either. Burned more then we ate. A couple of times we did ok, but do remember burning more. It certainly was fun to do! Thanks heavens for microwave popcorn today. I find it better then cooking on the regular stove with grease. The TV commercials show you the great big bubble, but in reality, they probably put a doctored one in place and a little tricky. You see the burger commercials today. everything stacked nicely, looking real good. Does your burgers look likee the ones you see on TV? Probably not! But they are so damn good!
Posted by Riversend | June 24, 2009 9:09 PM
Posted on June 24, 2009 21:09