Frozen Food: Here to Stay

Frozen food became a market mainstay. The industry experimented with package sizes and design, with Eskimos and huskies giving way to pictures of the vegetables themselves. Pour-and-store bags were introduced to the market in 1959, allowing consumers to cook only the amount they wanted. One packaging innovation and catchy design caught the market in 1954: the Swanson TV dinner. Although complete dinners had been introduced ten years previously, sales had been sluggish. The all-American dinner made by Swanson—in a three-section aluminum tray containing turkey with gravy and dressing, peas, and sweet potatoes—radically changed the way Americans eat. The box pictured the dinner on a television screen, not only as encouragement to eat while viewing but also to tie the product to the rising star, television. The concept worked—by 1960 annual sales of frozen dinners, TV and otherwise, surpassed $200 million. Williams had been right: there were enough Americans willing to sacrifice home cooking for convenience.