“The Fast History Of..." is a super-charged romp through the histories of anything from iconic brands to enthralling t | dHNfR1VJNjdRN25qUnM
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00:00 Heinz begins his path toward redemption and fortune
00:03 with one of the biggest aha moments
00:05 in the history of American food.
00:08 While traveling in England,
00:09 Heinz gets his first taste of something called katsup,
00:13 a fermented fish sauce that dates back to China
00:15 circa 300 BC.
00:18 Katsup is used to mask the taste of spoiled meat,
00:22 a common problem at the time.
00:24 But in many cases, the katsup is worse
00:26 than the rancid meat that it's covered.
00:28 (spits)
00:30 That's when H.J. has a revelation.
00:35 What if he could replace those slushy fish bits
00:38 with something more appealing, like fresh tomatoes?
00:42 - Remember, there's no refrigeration.
00:44 - You know, who knew that's how Heinz ketchup was created?
00:46 Just one of the stories you'll find on the Fast History
00:49 of its new show coming to the History Channel.
00:51 It takes a look at all sorts of subjects
00:53 from iconic brands like Heinz to Budweiser,
00:56 covers the mob, everything.
00:58 - Sherry Ordner-Middleman is the executive producer
01:00 of The Fast History of,
01:02 and she joins us live this morning.
01:03 Good morning.
01:04 - Good morning.
01:05 - All right, good.
01:06 We appreciate you being here.
01:07 We're gonna go through a couple of your subjects
01:08 that you cover.
01:09 And why'd you pick Heinz?
01:11 - Heinz is one of many.
01:14 What we pick are sort of brands, items,
01:18 cultural juggernauts that we all know and love.
01:23 So what we pick are brands that we all know and love,
01:25 and we're gonna go behind the scenes
01:26 and really give you the whole story as to how we got there,
01:29 how we got to that place.
01:30 - And I didn't know that ketchup was bigger in Canada
01:34 than any place else.
01:35 I thought we had that locked down here.
01:37 (Sherry and Sherry laughing)
01:38 - Apparently they still eat more ketchup than us.
01:41 - What do you know?
01:42 All right, tell us about Bush Beer and Budweiser,
01:44 and tell us about how that got tied to baseball.
01:47 - Yeah, so it's an interesting story.
01:50 So Budweiser, you know,
01:52 which comes from a town in Germany called Budweis,
01:57 had this sort of image problem,
01:58 which was they had,
02:00 there was this anti-German sentiment happening in America
02:03 after the war.
02:04 And so Budweiser really wanted to Americanize themselves.
02:07 So they really started to go red, white, and blue.
02:10 And ultimately they, you know, said,
02:14 "Well, what's more American than sports?"
02:19 And they started to kind of take over.
02:20 And they really led the way into Super Bowl advertising
02:24 being a huge thing.
02:25 And it was not the first Super Bowl,
02:27 I think it was the third Super Bowl.
02:29 There's a lot of facts in my brain
02:30 from working on this show,
02:31 but I believe it was the third, where they had a Super Bowl
02:34 ad and, you know, sort of became tied
02:37 to the Super Bowl from there.
02:38 And as the commercials got bigger and bigger,
02:42 the Super Bowl became the place to advertise.
02:45 - Ah, so we were looking at some clips here
02:47 from the show here.
02:48 Does each little section here feature
02:51 sort of a reenactment like that?
02:54 - So a lot of them do.
02:56 They, some of the reenactments come from another series
02:59 on History Channel called "The Food That Built America."
03:02 So when we have that great reenactment footage
03:05 on a story that we're covering,
03:06 we do absolutely use that fun stuff.
03:10 But the series also has brands that don't have reenactment,
03:14 but we use a ton of great archival material,
03:16 a lot of old commercials.
03:18 We've got brand experts, historians.
03:21 So we really paint a picture
03:23 using a combination of things.
03:24 So whether it's that recreation footage,
03:27 cool old footage, cool commercials,
03:29 or brand experts, industry experts.
03:32 - All right, and so it's not just products
03:33 that you're featuring here.
03:35 You also have a portion here about the Chicago lawyer,
03:38 Adolphus Green and the Loose Brothers.
03:40 - So that's actually part of the Nabisco story
03:45 and the Oreo cookie story.
03:47 - And what's that?
03:48 - So we did an episode on Nabisco
03:51 and the amazing thing about the Oreo cookie
03:54 is sort of how the Oreo cookie became iconic.
03:57 What a lot of people don't realize
03:58 is that the Hydrox cookie actually came first.
04:02 And there was this sort of rivalry
04:06 between Sunshine Bakery and Nabisco
04:09 and Sunshine Bakery made the Hydrox first.
04:11 And part of the fun story there is that
04:14 Hydrox was sort of so angry and jilted about the Oreo,
04:20 which they believed was ripping them off,
04:22 that they sort of focused on,
04:24 they copied us, they copied us.
04:27 In their advertising, they almost became like,
04:30 the get off my lawn neighbor.
04:32 Oreo was sunshine, children enjoying,
04:35 and twist and turn that cookie.
04:36 And Americans started to fall in love with Oreo
04:39 and really associate Oreo with joy and happiness.
04:41 So as iconic as Oreo is,
04:45 it actually came after the Hydrox.
04:48 - Interesting.
04:49 Well, it's cool 'cause it's only 30 minutes long
04:50 and you get all your history in 30 minutes or less.
04:52 It's the Fast History of,
04:53 airs Sunday nights on the History Channel.
04:55 Thanks for being with us, Sherry.
04:57 - Thank you.