{{Short description|Popcorn brand}}{{More citations needed|date=June 2025}}
{{Use mdy dates|date=June 2025}}
{{Use American English|date=June 2025}} thumb|Jiffy Pop Popcorn. Top to bottom: uncooked with paper outer covering in place, uncooked with foil inner covering exposed, cooked with foil intact, cooked with foil opened.'''Jiffy Pop''' is a popcorn brand owned by Conagra Brands. The product consists of popcorn kernels, oil, and flavoring agents contained within a foil-covered, disposable aluminum pan. Once the paper outer covering is removed, the pan is held by an attached handle over a heat source such as a stove burner or campfire and gently agitated, causing the kernels to pop and push outward against the foil. The pan is then removed from the heat, the foil is torn open, and the popcorn is served.
Jiffy Pop is one of the few brands that continues to sell popcorn in pre-packaged pans ready for cooking.
==History== Frederick C. Mennen of LaPorte, Indiana, a chemist, inventor and industrialist,<ref>{{cite web |agency=AP |title=Obituaries: Frederick C. Mennen; Industrialist, 62 |work=New York Times |date=March 22, 1991 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/1991/03/22/obituaries/frederick-c-mennen-industrialist-62.html |access-date=June 26, 2011}}</ref> is credited with developing the product in 1958. Mennen began marketing Jiffy Pop in 1959.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.conagrafoods.com/consumer/brands/getBrand.do?page=jiffy_pop |title=Jiffy Pop Popcorn - Self Contained Popping Pan - ConAgra Foods |access-date=2015-05-16 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121004050147/http://www.conagrafoods.com/consumer/brands/getBrand.do?page=jiffy_pop |archive-date=2012-10-04 }} ConAgra Jiffy Pop: Fact Sheet</ref>
American Home Products purchased Jiffy Pop from Mennen that same year. There, Alvin Golub, a pharmacologist, perfected the product, and within one year it reached the national U.S. market.{{Original research inline|date=June 2011}} In 1976, the stage magician Harry Blackstone Jr. was endorsing what the television-commercial jingle called "the magic treat — as much fun to make as it is to eat".<ref>p. 40 Podojil, John (Jack) ''Popcorn Favorites'' Trafford Publishing, 2013</ref>
Jiffy Pop was based on a similar product designed five years before by Benjamin Coleman of Berkley, Michigan, and marketed by the Taylor-Reed Corporation as E-Z Pop.<ref>''Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America'', by Andrew F. Smith, 1999.</ref> In the early 1960s, Taylor-Reed sued Mennen Food Products for patent infringement. The district court ruled for the plaintiff, finding Jiffy Pop and E-Z Pop equivalent products, but the case was overturned on appeal.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/324/324.F2d.108.14143.html |title=The Taylor-Reed Corporation v. Mennen Food Products, Inc., American Home Products Corporation, and Frederick C. Mennen |access-date=2009-02-28 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120524140046/http://bulk.resource.org/courts.gov/c/F2/324/324.F2d.108.14143.html |archive-date=2012-05-24 |url-status=dead }}</ref>
American Home Products spun off its food division, and renamed it International Home Foods, in 1996. In 2000, ConAgra purchased International Home Foods.
Original Jiffy Pop packages used a plain, bright aluminum pan. This was eventually replaced by an aluminum pan with a black treatment on the outside to improve heat transfer. Also, although at one time a "Natural" flavor and a Jiffy Pop Microwave Popcorn version was manufactured, Jiffy Pop is today offered in only one stovetop version, Butter Flavor Popcorn.<ref>[https://www.jiffypoppopcorn.com/ Jiffy Pop website]</ref>
==Advertising== Jiffy Pop has run television commercials dating back at least to 1967. In one commercial, a genie appears and gives two children Jiffy Pop to eat. The slogan was repeated several times to highlight the fact that Jiffy Pop is "as much fun to make as it is to eat".<ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vegPoI0NgdM Jiffy Pop TV commercial] from about 1960</ref>
==See also== *{{portal-inline|Food}} *List of popcorn brands
==References== {{Reflist}}
==Further reading== *{{cite book |last=Smith |first=Andrew F. |year=1999 |title=Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America |publisher=University of South Carolina Press |isbn=1-57003-300-5 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/poppedculturesoc00smit }} *{{cite book |last=Sussman |first=Adeena |year=2006 |title=Just Heat It and Eat It!: Convenience Foods of the '40s-'60s |publisher=Collectors Press |isbn=1-933112-19-0}} *{{cite book |last=Wyman |first=Carolyn |year=2004 |title=Better Than Homemade: Amazing Food That Changed the Way We Eat |publisher=Quirk Books |isbn=1-931686-42-4 |url-access=registration |url=https://archive.org/details/betterthanhomema0000wyma_m1j6 }}
==External links== *{{Official|http://www.jiffypoppopcorn.com/}} {{ConAgra}} {{Popcorn brands}}
Category:Popcorn brands Category:Conagra Brands brands Category:Products introduced in 1959