You can keep your
July 4, 1776. You can keep your
December 7, 1941. You can keep your
August 6, 1945. You can keep your
January 1, 1970. You can even keep your
September 11, 2001 (
hand over heart). The day I shall ever keep sacred is October 14, 1947. Two remarkable things happened. First, man finally broke the
sound barrier (err and lived). Second, man could now, for the first time, spray food out of an
aerosol can. Yes. Reddi-Wip, the world's first sprayable
convenience food, was released onto
grocery store shelves.
On this day, October 14, 1947, the
modern era truly began.
Reddi-Wip was invented by Aaron "
Bunny"
Lapin. During the war years, Lapin sold a whip cream substitute called Sta-Whip door to door. Real whip cream was hard to come by because of
war rationing. No one liked the substitute but what could you do?
Nothing. That's what.
A whole hill of big fat nothing.
So shut up and eat your Sta-whip. Or at least that's what everyone BUT Lapin thought. Lapin noticed perishable
dairy luxuries like whip cream could be stored but once you opened a can you pretty much had to use the whole product at once.
In his spare time, Lapin was also a tinkerer. In the '40s he perfected an
aerosol valve. Lapin realized his aerosol valve would solve the storage/reuse problem. Putting two and two together, he first came up with 3.8. He tried to market spray-on
chocolate. It didn't catch on. Remembering his days selling Sta-Whip, he hit on real whip cream in a spray can. Ah ha! He introduced Reddi-Wip in
St. Louis, getting milk men to sell and deliver it door to door.
Word of this miraculous whip began to spread and by the early '50s, Lapin took his product national. He hired celebrity
Arthur Godfrey to endorse his product in ads. (When you think spray-on food, who could you think of
but Arthur Godfrey?). In 1954 Lapin sold Reddi-Wip to
Beatrice Foods.
Lapin tried to introduce other spray-on foods like spray-on milkshakes and spray-on
margarine.
Oddly enough, consumer acceptance was low for these products and they failed. But spray-on whip cream? Well, the uses were so varied, how could this product not be useful? Unlike spray-on margarine, you could spray whip cream on
cake,
ice cream, cookies, and your lover's genitals.
Lapin lived to the ripe and well-preserved age of 85, dying in 1999. He lived long enough to see his Reddi-Wip invention named by
Time magazine as one of history's 100 greatest ever consumer products. Beats the ass off
Q-Tips, thats for sure. Please note, Lapin never ever was responsible for
spray-on cheese. Lay your blame elsewhere, you
enemy of freedom.