Because Why? Eskimo Pie

So, why was this famous ice cream product named Eskimo Pie? Well, it’s cold and round. That’s all we could come up with. Fortunately, the good people at FoodReference.com got us thinking again with some historical background:

Christian Kent Nelson (who was also a high school teacher) invented the Eskimo Pie in Onawa, Iowa in 1919 or 1920. He originally called it the I-Scream-Bar. Supposedly inspired by a boy having to make a difficult decision; the choice between ice cream and candy, and only having the price for one. This inspired the salesman to combine the two, and create the Eskimo Pie….By early 1922, they were selling at the rate of a million bars a day, and supposedly caused the price of cocoa beans to rise by 50%!

All well and good, but our nagging Because Why? investigator just wouldn’t relent. Why “Eskimo Pie”? Why not “Polar Bear Bar” or “Penguin Pie”?

Unable to find a satisfactory explanation online, we did the unthinkable and cracked open an actual hardcover printed book. What we found was chilling.

To refresh your cinema history, Nanook of the North was the first full-length motion picture documentary. It riveted audiences with an inside look at Eskimo life when it premiered in 1922, just months before Eskimo Pies got their new name. Says An Incomplete Education by Judy Jones and William Wilson, about the phenomenal appeal of Nanook (p. 135):

Unpredictably, a big commercial, as well as critical, hit. Of course, it helped that the picture opened in New York in the middle of one of the hottest Junes on record; but beyond that, viewers couldn’t get over the way they were invited not only to travel to a distant clime, but to look into somebody else’s mind and heart. [Aside: the first "Reality" programming.]…Then there was Nanook himself: the bright eyes, the continual smile, the weather-beaten face. Within a matter of months, Eskimo pies were being sold on both sides of the Atlantic, and words like “igloo,” “kayak,” and “anorak,” formerly known only to anthropologists, were popping up in grade-school civics tests and sporting-goods store windows. Too bad Nanook couldn’t have basked in his new fame: He died of starvation, out there on the ice, shortly after the film was released.

Extra scoop

Häagen-Dazs was named in 1961 by ice cream magnate Reuben Mattus, who grew up in the Bronx. He choose the name because it sounded European, vaguely Danish. It’s a completely made-up name for an ice cream company that resides in Pennsylvania.