Jell-O facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Jell-O

Owner	Kraft Heinz
Introduced	1897; 128 years ago (1897)

Jell-O, also spelled JELL-O, is a famous American brand. It offers many powdered mixes. These include fruit-flavored gelatin desserts (like jelly), pudding, and mixes for no-bake cream pies. The original gelatin dessert is what Jell-O is most known for. "Jell-O" is a special name owned by Kraft Heinz. The company is based in Chicago, Illinois.

This dessert was very popular in the early 1900s. The first gelatin dessert was created in Le Roy, New York, in 1897. A man named Pearle Bixby Wait gave it the name Jell-O. He and his wife, May, made the product. They added strawberry, raspberry, orange, and lemon flavors to sugar and powdered gelatin. You mix the powder with boiling water, then cool it to make a gel.

What is Jell-O?

Jell-O is sold in two main ways. You can buy it already made, ready to eat. Or, you can buy it as a powder. It comes in many different colors and flavors. The powder has gelatin and flavorings. These include sugar or special artificial sweeteners.

To make it, you dissolve the powder in hot water. Then, you chill it until it becomes firm. You can add fruits, vegetables, or whipped cream to make fancy snacks. These snacks can even be shaped using molds.

The Jell-O brand also sells pudding and pie-filling products that don't use gelatin. Regular Jell-O pudding is cooked on the stove with milk. You can eat it warm or cold. Jell-O instant pudding is mixed with cold milk and chilled. It sets without any cooking. For pie fillings, you use less liquid when preparing the same pudding mixes.

Jell-O's Story

How Jell-O Started

(Left): Pearle Bixby Wait, who created Jell-O; (right): An old Jell-O ad from around 1910

Gelatin is a protein that comes from collagen. It's taken from boiled animal bones and tissues. People have used gelatin in food, especially desserts, since the 1400s.

Gelatin desserts became popular in New York during the Victorian era. People made amazing and detailed jelly molds. Back then, gelatin was sold in sheets. It took a lot of time to clean it. So, gelatin desserts were mostly for rich people or royalty.

In 1845, Peter Cooper got a patent for powdered gelatin. This powdered gelatin was much easier to make and use in cooking.

In 1897, in LeRoy, New York, Pearle Bixby Wait, who made cough syrup, gave his gelatin dessert the name "Jell-O". He and his wife, May, added strawberry, raspberry, orange, and lemon flavors to powdered gelatin and sugar. In 1899, Wait sold Jell-O to "Orator Francis Woodward". Woodward's Genesee Pure Food Company already made a successful health drink called Grain-O.

1904 advertisement

Becoming Popular

Several things helped Jell-O become a well-known product. New inventions like refrigeration, powdered gelatin, and machine packaging made it easier. Also, home economics classes taught people how to use it. The company's smart marketing also played a big role.

At first, Woodward found it hard to sell the powdered Jell-O. Starting in 1902, his company began placing advertisements in the Ladies' Home Journal. These ads called Jell-O "America's Most Famous Dessert." Jell-O was only a small success until 1904. That year, the company sent many salespeople to give out free Jell-O cookbooks. This was a new and very effective way to market a product.

Within ten years, the company added three new flavors: chocolate (which was stopped in 1927), cherry, and peach. They also started selling Jell-O in Canada. Famous people like actress Ethel Barrymore and opera singer Ernestine Schumann-Heink appeared in ads. Their recipes were also featured. Some Jell-O ads were even painted by the famous artist Maxfield Parrish.

In 1923, the Jell-O Company introduced "D-Zerta." This was a version of Jell-O sweetened without sugar. Two years later, Postum and Genesee companies joined together. In 1927, Postum bought Clarence Birdseye's frozen foods company. This led to the creation of the General Foods Corporation.

Quick, Easy Jell-O Wonder Dishes, a Jell-O Cookbook from 1930

By 1930, congealed salads became very popular in American cooking. So, the company introduced lime-flavored Jell-O. This flavor was perfect for the salads people were making with different ingredients. Popular Jell-O recipes often included things like cabbage, celery, green peppers, and even cooked pasta.

In 1934, Jell-O sponsored comedian Jack Benny. He became the dessert's spokesperson. Around this time, a famous jingle was created. It spelled out "J-E-L-L-O" with a rising musical tune. This jingle was well-known for many years.

The jingle was written by Don Bestor. He was the bandleader on Jack Benny's radio show, "The Jell-O Program Starring Jack Benny."

In 1936, chocolate Jell-O came back. It was an instant pudding made with milk. It became very popular. Over time, other pudding flavors were added. These included vanilla, tapioca, coconut, pistachio, butterscotch, and rice pudding.

By the 1950s, salads were so popular that Jell-O made savory and vegetable flavors. These included celery, Italian, mixed vegetable, and seasoned tomato. These flavors are no longer sold today.

The Baby Boom Years

Between the 1920s and 1950s, many fancy tea time foods were served. They often used expensive ingredients like caviar or lobster. Jell-O became an affordable way to make pretty, light dishes. These dishes were common for refined tea times. By the 1920s, almost one-third of salad recipes in cookbooks used gelatin. They had various fillings like fruit, vegetables, or even cream cheese.

Old recipes from the early 1900s included fruits like figs, dates, and bananas. Or, lemon-flavored Jell-O was paired with maraschino cherries, marshmallows, and almonds. One sweet gelatin dessert was called "Good Salad." It had vanilla pudding, tapioca pudding, pineapple, mandarin oranges, and orange gelatin. The puddings were made with juice from canned fruit and flavored gelatin. Then, fruits were added, and the dessert was chilled until firm.

The baby boom after World War II greatly increased Jell-O sales. Young mothers often didn't have the same community support as older generations. So, marketers quickly promoted easy-to-prepare packaged foods. By this time, making a Jell-O dessert was simple. You just boiled water, mixed it with Jell-O, put it into Tupperware molds, and chilled it.

New flavors were always being added, and unpopular ones were removed. In the 1950s and 1960s, flavors like apple, black cherry, grape, lemon-lime, and many fruit combinations were introduced. In 1966, the Jell-O "No-Bake" dessert line started. This allowed people to make a cheesecake in just 15 minutes. In 1969, Jell-O 1•2•3 was launched. This gelatin dessert separated into three layers as it cooled. It was common until 1987 but is now rare. In 1971, ready-to-eat pudding cups called Jell-O Pudding Treats were introduced.

Lime Jell-O

Sales Changes and Comeback

In 1964, the slogan "There's always room for Jell-O" was created. It promoted Jell-O as a "light dessert" that could be eaten even after a big meal.

From the 1960s to the 1980s, Jell-O's sales slowly went down. Many Jell-O dishes became special occasion foods instead of everyday items. Marketers thought this happened because families were smaller, lifestyles were faster, and more women were working. By 1986, a study showed that mothers with young children rarely bought Jell-O.

To fix this, Jell-O hired Dana Gioia. The marketing team looked back at old Jell-O cookbooks. They rediscovered "Jigglers," though the original recipe didn't use that name. Jigglers are Jell-O snacks molded into fun shapes that you can eat with your fingers. Jell-O started a huge marketing campaign. It famously featured Bill Cosby as the spokesperson. This campaign was a big success and greatly increased sales.

Cosby became the brand's spokesperson in 1974. He continued to be the voice of Jell-O for almost thirty years. During his time, he helped introduce new products. These included frozen Jell-O Pops (gelatin and pudding kinds) and new Sugar-Free Jell-O. Sugar-Free Jell-O replaced D-Zerta in 1984 and was sweetened with NutraSweet. He also promoted Jell-O Jigglers and Sparkling Jell-O, a fizzy version of the dessert. In 2010, Cosby returned as a Jell-O spokesperson in an online web series called OBKB.

In 1990, General Foods joined Kraft Foods Inc.. New flavors were introduced, such as watermelon, blueberry, cranberry, margarita, and piña colada. In 2001, the state Senate of Utah said Jell-O was a favorite snack food there. They noted Jell-O's importance in Mormon cuisine, like Jell-O salad. The Governor Michael O. Leavitt even declared an annual "Jell-O Week." During the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, souvenir pins included one showing green Jell-O.

The original Jell-O Factory in Le Roy, New York, pictured in 2014

As of 2011, over 420 million boxes of Jell-O gelatin and over 1 billion Jell-O cups were sold in the United States each year. As of 2016, there were more than 110 products under the Jell-O brand name.

Jell-O is a key ingredient in the "Jell-O mold." This dessert uses a special mold for gelatin. Small pieces of chopped fruit, nuts, and other ingredients are added before it hardens. You cannot use fresh pineapple, papaya, kiwifruit, or ginger root. They contain enzymes that stop gelatin from "setting."

Where Jell-O is Made

Jell-O Museum in LeRoy, New York

As of 2012, LeRoy, New York, is known as the home of Jell-O. It has the only Jell-O Museum in the world. The museum is on the main road through the small town. Jell-O was made here until 1964. Then, General Foods closed the plant and moved production to Dover, Delaware. The Jell-O Gallery museum is run by the Le Roy Historical Society. It is located at the Le Roy House and Union Free School.

At the museum, visitors can learn about the dessert's history. Visitors can walk on Jell-O Brick Road, which has names of old factory workers. The museum shows materials used to make Jell-O, like sturgeon bladder and calves' hooves. It also displays various molds.

The Jell-O plant in Mason City, Iowa, makes all of America's ready-to-eat Jell-O gelatin dessert and pudding cups.

Advertising Jell-O

(Left) 1920 Jell-O recipe pamphlet; (center): 1948 ad; (right): a Jell-O thermometer

Jell-O's first ads appeared in the Ladies' Home Journal in 1904. These print ads often included recipes and colorful pictures. They became very popular. Famous artists like Rose O'Neill, Maxfield Parrish, and Norman Rockwell drew for the campaign. Franklin King, an artist for an ad agency, used his daughter Elizabeth in many pictures. She became the well-known "Jell-O Girl."

Jack Benny's popular radio show started being sponsored by Jell-O in 1934. The show didn't have commercial breaks. Instead, the announcer, Don Wilson, would talk about Jell-O during the program. This often made Jack Benny pretend to be annoyed for laughs. The first show created the five-note "J-E-L-L-O!" jingle. This jingle was used in Jell-O ads for many years. Lucille Ball's show My Favorite Husband was also sponsored by Jell-O.

Comedian Bill Cosby is strongly linked to Jell-O, especially Jell-O pudding. He appeared in many commercials for both. Later TV shows like The Simpsons and Saturday Night Live made fun of Cosby using Jell-O references. In the 1960s, the cast of Hogan's Heroes did a commercial with Carol Channing for Jell-O. Also, in the early seasons of Lucille Ball's 1960s TV series, The Lucy Show, cast members often did commercials for Jell-O.

In 1995, Jell-O used the tagline "It's alive!" and the phrase "J-E-L-L-OOOOOOO!".

In August 2018, Jell-O released an animated series called "JELL-O Wobz." It was available on YouTube and Amazon Prime Video.

Jell-O in Culture

Jell-O is mentioned in the 1936 song "A Fine Romance." It's humorously called a boring alternative to exciting romantic love. In 1980, composer William Bolcom wrote a funny song about Jell-O. It was called "Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise." This song made fun of how Jell-O was used in strange sweet and savory dishes.

In 1992, Ivette Bassa won an Ig Nobel Prize for inventing blue Jell-O.

The rock band Green Jellÿ was first named Green Jellö. But they had to change their name. Kraft Foods said the band was using the Jell-O trademark without permission.

Jell-O and Mormon Culture

Jell-O is very popular among Mormons. So much so that the area where many Mormons live is called the Jell-O Belt. In 2001, the Utah Senate said Jell-O was "a favorite snack food of Utah." They noted that Utah had eaten the most Jell-O per person for many years. Citizens of Utah even tried to "Take Back the Title" when Des Moines, Iowa, ate more Jell-O in 1999. Bill Cosby, the Jell-O spokesperson, spoke to the Utah Legislature. He said he believed Utahns loved Jell-O because it's perfect for families.

The idea that Mormons love Jell-O is not very old. News reports from 1969 and 1988 about popular foods in Utah didn't mention Jell-O. In the late 1980s, Jell-O had a marketing campaign. It promoted the snack and its Jigglers recipe as fun for kids and easy for parents. This message worked well with family-focused Mormons. In 1997, Kraft showed sales figures. They revealed that Salt Lake City had the highest Jell-O consumption per person.

Current Jell-O Flavors

Here are some of the Jell-O flavors made today:

Gelatin Flavors

Pudding Flavors

Some flavors are also available without sugar or with fewer calories.
Some flavors are only available during certain times of the year.
Some flavors are only sold as ready-to-eat products.

See also