Jun. 09, 2010 - Issue #764: Hot Summer Guide 2010

Provenance

History of Kool-Aid

Working out of his mother's Hastings, Nebraska kitchen throughout the 1920s, young inventor Edwin Perkins had already invented a number of household products and patent medicines—such as the stop-smoking aid Nix-O-Tine—when he began selling a product door-to-door and by mail called Fruit-Smack, a concentrated fruit drink available in six flavours—strawberry, cherry, lemon-lime, grape, orange and raspberry—that proved popular with families due to its affordability. Because the concentrate was in liquid form, it was expensive to ship and breakage was a problem, which limited Perkins' ability to expand his business. So, in 1927, he set out to discover a way to remove the liquid entirely.

The result—a powdered drink mix that Perkins was able to package in paper envelopes for cheap and hassle-free shipping—he called "Kool-Ade." Originally, Perkins sold his new product in local grocery stores, but demand quickly grew to be so great that he was soon racking up international sales. He quickly stopped selling his household products and patent medicines, relocated to Chicago to be in a better position to ship his fruit drink and, by 1934, had changed its name to "Kool-Aid."

Throughout the Depression, Kool-Aid was sold for only five cents per envelope which ensured that it was a luxury that most families could afford, and plenty of children busied themselves offering the beverage at Kool-Aid stands for a small profit, if they could keep from drinking the merchandise. By 1950, Perkins employed 300 workers making over a million packets of Kool-Aid per day.

In 1953, Perkins sold the operation to General Foods which almost immediately introduced the anthropomorphic pitcher that serves as Kool-Aid's mascot to this day. The original formula has remained largely unchanged, though new flavours have been added, and Kool-Aid remains a popular summertime drink amongst children, and is still available on city sidewalks for between 25 and 50 cents per glass.