MINNEAPOLIS -- General Mills opened up it archives as part of the company's 150th birthday celebration and revealed a veritable treasure trove of artifacts and documents.
That fountain of trivia includes a lot of twists and turns, and some downright surprising facts.
The General
Most people know the company isn't named about a general named Mills. General Mills was the name created with Washburn-Crosby Flour Company merged with smaller regional mills in 1928. But the company's founder, Cadwallader Washburn, was a general.
He rose to the rank of Major-General in the Civil War. Before the war, in 1855, he saw the hydraulic power potential of St. Anthony Falls on the Mississippi River. He built a canal along the south bank of the river to generate mechanical water power for the saw mills and flower mills.
"So what he first builds in Minnesota is essentially a power company," Tom Forsythe, General Mills historian and vice president of communications, explained.
"After the war is over he comes back and decides, "You know I’ve been selling water power to these other millers, maybe I should get into the milling business myself. This is a good business decision for Washburn because of course he doesn’t have to pay for his power!"
Washburn's residence
Cadwallader Washburn never actually lived in Minnesota. He made his home downstream in La Crosse, Wisconsin. In fact, Washburn was the governor of Wisconsin at the same time his top competitor, John Pillsbury, was the governor of Minnesota. Talk about a border battle!
But Washburn's dedication to his Minneapolis mill was unwavering. When it exploded in 1878, killing 18 workers and leveling several surrounding city blocks, Washburn replaced it with a larger and safer flour mill.
"The first thing he does arriving on the scenes of the smoking ruins is he begins to step out the outlines for a new, even larger mill," Forsythe said. "He showed a tremendous willingness to essentially double down at the worst moment. General mills could’ve ended in 1878 with that mill explosion."
Mystery silhouette
Some who drive past the corporate headquarters in Golden Valley may assume the large silhouette cutout steel sculpture is an image of Cadwallader Washburn. It's not.
It's known as "Man with a Briefcase" and it intended to be a tribute to the now anonymous white collar workers that expanded the company's sales through good times and bad. That includes one who discovered something huge just by being very curious.
Bisquick discovery
General Mills salesman riding a train in 1931 was surprised he could get hot, fresh biscuits so late at night. He asked the railroad chef about it, and the chef revealed he had pre-mixed his baking ingredients.
From that Bisquick was discovered, and the company went on to dominate the baking mix market.
"He went back and engaged the chef, instead of saying, 'Hey, hot biscuits!' and it creates an entire category," Forsythe explained. "We still make this product. It’s still a pretty significant seller for us 85 years later."
Betty Crocker
She appeared in TV commercials. Her face and her signature adorn baking mixes and cookbooks. And yet she never really existed.
Betty was created out of thin air in the 1920's to respond to mail from customers and contest entries.
"We created Betty Crocker in response to promotion in 1921 for Gold Medal Flour," Forsythe remarked.
"Crocker was named after a director for the company who had recently retired and was a well regarded guy. Betty was chosen simply because it sounded friendly!"
Betty's trademark signature? It belonged to one of the women who worked in the company's consumer response office.
But what to do about a face? The original chalk drawings of Betty Crocker portrayed her as rather serious and stern, with graying hair. But her countenance softened through the decades -- she seemed to grow younger and happier.
Saved by a song
It could be argued that Wheaties was saved by a song, and that Wheaties saved the company because it allowed General Mills to diversify.
"It’s a very important moment for General Mills, because until that moment we were a flour company," Forsythe asserted. "This is the product that makes us into a food company."
But Washburn Crosby Whole Wheat Flakes got off to a rocky start. The cereal wasn't selling well.
"In 1924 in an employee contest we asked employees to submit another name for Washburn Crosby Whole Wheat flakes that might more interesting. And the name chosen was Wheaties."
But a radio jingle, "Have you tried Wheaties?" put the product over the top. In the Minneapolis areas a local quartet was hired to perform the commercial live on WCCO radio.
It was a formula repeated in markets across the nation, because mass recording technology wasn't that far along yet in the early 20's.
"So we hired quartets across the country to sing the jingle, advertising on radio, and Wheaties turns around, becomes a successful product for us."
Cheeri-Oats to Cheerios
The name Cheerios was all about stopping a lawsuit. The original 1941 name Cheeri-Oats sounded too much like someone else’s brand name. So the company went with Cheerios instead, and the rest is history.
The cereal became the company's best seller of all times.
"And we think that worked out for us very well!" Forsythe quipped. "It’s the best lawsuit ever!"
More than food
General Mills made ton of dough selling flour, but the company has a very prolific research branch with some very surprising contributions to consumer and industrial technology.
Case in point -- the first so-called "black box" flight data recorder was developed by University of Minnesota researcher James “Crash” Ryan in the General Mills labs. If the name sounds familiar, Ryan is the same guy who invented the retractable seatbelt and at times used grad students as crash test dummies.
The General mills electronics division also built Alvin – the deep ocean submersible used on countless deep sea missions. Alvin snapped the first shots of the Titanic wreckage.
Nerf is the word
General Mills had a toy division that included Kenner, Lionel Trains, Parker -- think Monopoly, Risk, Clue, etc.
So you'll find Care Bears in the General Mills archives, along with the original Nerf balls.
"The original Nerf Ball was just a ball of foam -- it didn’t have anything else going on with it. And we sold four million of those Nerf balls!"
The orphanage
You might guess that Washburn High School in Minneapolis, home of The Millers, is named for Cadwallader Washburn.
But what many don't realize is that the land under the high school and Ramsey Middle School next door, was once occupied by a large orphanage. The Washburn Memorial Orphan Asylum, built with money from the Washburn estate, occupied the northwest corner of 50th Street and Nicollet Ave. from 1883 to 1924.
The original mission of the orphanage is now carried on by The Washburn Center for Children in Minneapolis.
Many other familiar names around the city also have links to the company. The Dunwoody Institute was started with $3 million in money bequeathed by Cadwallader Washburn's silent partner, William Hood Dunwoody.
The James Ford Bell museum and library at the University of Minnesota is named for the CEO who guided the company through much of the 20th Century.
Frozen pizza
Little known fact -- General Mills is now the number one seller of frozen pizza in the world. Twin Cities restaurateur Rose Totino, who essentially invented frozen pizza, sold her company to Pillsbury. And Pillsbury eventually became part of General Mills.
In a frozen pizza landscape that includes fancy gourmet pies with self-rising crusts, the simple stripped down "party pizza" of the 1970's remains a hot commodity, along with pizza rolls and other appetizers.
"We sell more than a million pizzas a day," Forsythe said to a stunned reporter. "One out of every 150 Americans has one of our pizzas every day."
Pillsbury's legacy
Pillsbury was a top competitor for 100 years, but when it became part of General Mills, so did its history.
So, for instance, the General Mills historian Tom Forsythe can talk at length about how the Pillsbury family saved the University of Minnesota when it was a fledgling land grant university.
But the General Mills archives also include a lot of artifacts related to Pillsbury's main spokesperson, a character named Poppin' Fresh, a.k.a. The Pillsbury Doughboy.
"His first appearance was in that classic TV commercial in 1965, when a mom cracks a tube of dough on the countertop in 1965 and he pops out and starts talking to her."
The original Poppin’ Fresh commercials used stop-motion animation, much like claymation, instead of traditional two dimensional cartoon animation. The camera would snap a 24 different pictures for one second of film.
The actual plastic figures and props used in Leo Burnett’s classic commercials are now part of the archives at General Mills.
"He had different bodies, in different shapes – which are poseable -- and he had different heads with different expressions, and we would change the head to change his expression."
Scholars are still divided on the issue of whether Poppin’ Fresh was married, but based on the sets of finger puppets the Pillsbury Playthings he had an entire family and pets.
150 years later
General Mills started with one flour mill in 1866, and now has 42,000 employees globally. The company had sales of $17.6 billion across six continents in 2015. And there's nothing trivial about numbers like those.