When was kool aid created

For more information please see the Hastings Museum website. Perkins was very good at organizing and encouraging his staff. He hired sales representatives to sell his products all over the country. Those who sold the most products won prizes. These sales representatives or "jobbers" also did the distributing. They made use of the self-selling "silent salesman" to help them do their work. The silent salesman was a small, simple, cardboard case in which Kool-Aid packages were displayed in popular areas of the store.

Another incentive to buy Kool-Aid was the great price of 10 cents per package. During the Great Depression, the price was cut in half for the same product: 5 cents. Premiums, such as small toys or cardboard cutouts, made Kool-Aid especially appealing to children. They could collect hats and pins to wear. Kool-Aid even reached the men and women on the front lines during World War II with Kool-Aid lemonade mix included in their ration kits. During the Great Depression, demand for Kool-Aid actually escalated, and the Hastings location became too small.

In when Perkins was 64 years old, he sold his company to the General Foods Corporation. The gelatine dessert featured six flavors at the time, produced from a powdered mix. This got Perkins to thinking about creating powdered-mix drinks. Perkins and his family moved to Hastings in , and in that city in , Perkins invented the "Fruit Smack," the forerunner of Kook-Aid, which he sold mainly via mail order. It was a family project to package and ship the popular soft drink mix around the country.

Perkins was also selling other products by mail order—including a mixture to help smokers give up tobacco— but by , the demand for the drink "was so strong, other items were dropped so Perkins could concentrate solely on Kool-Aid," the Hastings museum notes, adding that he eventually moved production of the drink to Chicago.

Years later, Perkins sold his company to General Foods, which is now part of Kraft Foods , making him a rich man, if a bit sad to cede control of his invention. Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. Measure ad performance. Select basic ads. Create a personalised ads profile. Select personalised ads. After World War I, the budding entrepreneur invented a tobacco remedy called Nix-O-Tine, the first of his many patent medicines.

In Perkins and his new wife, Kathryn "Kitty" Shoemaker, moved to Hastings and expanded the Perkins Products Company, which sold more than household products through direct sales. One of the most popular was Fruit-Smack, a liquid fruit drink concentrate. In Perkins reconstituted Fruit- Smack into powdered crystals and packaged it in bright paper envelopes. Originally called Kool-Ade, the drink mix was sold in selfservice display cartons another Perkins innovation in grocery stores and was so successful that the company moved to Chicago in By the end of the Great Depression, Edwin Perkins owned a suburban mansion and employed hundreds of workers in his factory.