Reddi-Whip, a Party in your Mouth
I suppose the plan was to construct the dessert at the picnic, dishing out the pre-cut peach and banana slices, adding some blue berries and then crowning the assemblage with ribbons of Reddi-Whip. But one of the four young women said give me that can of Reddi-Whip. She tilted her head back, opened her mouth and fired. From that moment on the picnic degenerated into Reddi-Whip roulette.
Apparently there is something irresistible about nitrous-oxide propelled whipped cream rocketing down one’s throat on a summer’s day. The ladies were giggling so much I wondered whether some sort of laughing gas effect had kicked in. Or was it the mutual realization that they were all cream junkies unable to resist “shooting up.”
The story of Reddi-Whip’s invention is interesting in that it began as a vegetable oil cream substitute during World War II rationing of Dairy. It was Sta-Whip. The method of aerosolizing the mixture was perfected and a nifty nozzle to ripple the “cream” devised. Then, after the War, in 1948, Bunny Lapin applied his insights to cream, producing Reddi-Whip. It was marketed for its convenience – company desserts prepped in minimal time with maximal effect. It was the nozzle valve and propulsion system that elevated Larkin’s Reddi Whip over various experiments by Kraft and others to make substitute dairy emulations from soy and other vegetable prodects. In 1968 Hunt-Wesson bought Lapin’s company and made the product national.
I can recall my mother buying it sometime in the 1970s . . . and I remember catching my younger sister Diane doing a mouth shot in the kitchen on the sly sometime in 1972—at a Thanksgiving.
Now that Reddi-Whip comes in coconut and almond milk based formulations, one can envision two handed multi-flavor injections . . . the future is now!
Reddi-wip. 😉