Read My Lips - the blog

The Good Humor Man?

What is good humor? As beauty is in the eye of the beholder, what is funny to one person may go completely over the head of someone else. Some folks try to make everything fit a pattern. They see everything as either good or bad, black or white. One must write according to the advice given in books on writing. However, what kind of creativity would we have in art if works had to meet the elementary guidelines set out in art class? Through the eyes of a creative person, the mundane becomes hilarious, and melancholy becomes euphoria. It's a gift. (That's "Jes' My Take", though.)

Credit a clever Ohio candy maker for the invention of the Good Humor® Bar. It was 1920.

Harry Burt had just created the Jolly Boy Sucker, a lollypop on a stick. Later, while working in his ice cream parlor, Burt developed a smooth chocolate coating that was compatible with ice cream. Unfortunately, the new combination was too messy to eat. Burt’s young son, Harry Jr., suggested that his dad take some of the wooden sticks used for the Jolly Boy Suckers and freeze them into the ice cream. The first ice cream on a stick was born. The name Good Humor came from the belief that a person’s “humor” or temperament was related to the humor of the palate (one’s sense of taste). To market his Good Humor Bars, Burt sent out a fleet of 12 chauffeur-driven trucks with bells to make door-to-door deliveries. The Good Humor Man was born.