The Good Humor Man

Appears in
Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets

By Darra Goldstein

Published 2015

  • About

The Good Humor Man, with his still popular Good Humor Bar, became the personification of one of the most successful of the countless ice cream novelties created in the early twentieth century. The confection was developed in 1920 when Harry Burt, a Youngstown, Ohio, candy maker, coated a slice of vanilla ice cream with chocolate. When Burt’s daughter Ruth complained that eating it was too messy, his son Harry Jr. suggested putting a wooden lollipop stick in it. Burt did, and his children, like millions to come, were delighted.