Cyberspace - Karl Mamer

Home | Essay Home | White Label Humour | Help Spread Karl

Reddi-Wip

______

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 liked to tinker. 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 it door to door.

Word of this miraculous whip began to spread and by the early '50s Lapin was selling it all across America. 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 of Q-Tips, that's for sure. Please note, Lapin never ever was responsible for spray-on cheese or spray-on hair. Lay your blame elsewhere, you enemy of freedom.

* * *

Free for online distribution as long as

appears on the article.

Direct comments and questions to mailto:kamamer@yahoo.com