Good Humor

When the Eskimo Pie became a national sensation in 1921, Burt began experimenting with chocolate-dipped ice cream. He put a chocolate-coated rectangle of ice cream on a wooden stick to make it less messy to eat and called it the Good Humor Ice Cream Sucker. Burt applied for two patents, but he didn’t wait until the application was approved. He immediately began selling his ice cream bars, packed in ice, from trucks that drove around Youngstown with bells clanging to announce their presence. After Harry Burt died, the company was bought by a group of Cleveland businessmen in 1926. They created the Good Humor Corporation of America and began franchising the operation. They needed funds to expand and approached the New York financier Michael J. Meehan, who gained control of the company.