Bosco Chocolate Syrup

Bosco Chocolate Syrup is a brand of chocolate syrup first produced in 1928. The company, Bosco Products, Inc., is based in Towaco, New Jersey, and products are sold throughout the United States, Western Europe, Asia and the Middle East.[1]

Production process

Bulk materials are added via automatic measuring devices into stainless steel cooking vats. Minor ingredients and flavorings are blended into the batch separately, through a custom blender device, following product handling and quality assurance codes. While in the vats, Bosco is pasteurized for product uniformity and then cooled for bottling. Computers measure and monitor the product temperatures. Malt extract is added, which combined with Bosco cocoa powder yields the distinctive Bosco taste.

Bosco was once packaged in glass jars, but is now sold in plastic squeeze bottles.

As of 2014, Bosco is produced in several flavors in addition to the original chocolate: strawberry, caramel, sea salt caramel, sugar free, and mocha (the last of which was added ca. 2012, replacing berry blue).[2]

Cultural references

Vik Muniz, a modern artist, is famous for recreating well-known works of art, such as The Last Supper by Leonardo da Vinci entirely in Bosco Chocolate Syrup.[3] A Bosco portrait by Muniz sold for $110,000 in 2007.[4]

Bosco Chocolate Syrup, at that time called Bosco Milk Amplifier, was heavily advertised on children's shows during the late 1950s and early 1960s, such as The Popeye Club, a local Atlanta, Ga. program featuring Popeye cartoons, as well as live action sequences.[5] Bosco commercials were featured frequently as some of the "retromercials" used in lieu of commercial breaks on TV Land during its earliest years.

In the ninth episode of the third season of the sitcom The Mary Tyler Moore Show, called "Farmer Ted and the News", Murray, delivering a glass of milk for Ted, jokes that had he known it was for Ted he "would've put some Bosco in it."

In the comedy series Laverne & Shirley, the characters Lenny and Squiggy are both lovers of Bosco, Squiggy parroting the contemporary commercials that it's not just a chocolate syrup, "it's a milk amplifier."

In a fourth-season episode of M*A*S*H, Radar reveals that he is fond of dipping his Zweiback in his Bosco.

In the Seinfeld episode "The Secret Code", George Costanza reveals his ATM PIN "Bosco" to J. Peterman's mother on her deathbed, who in turn repeats the phrase as her last word before she dies.[6]

In the Seinfeld episode "The Baby Shower", George is obsessed with a woman who used Bosco in her "performance art", spilling it all over him and ruining his shirt. Three years after the event, he still has the stained shirt and wears it to her baby shower where he unsuccessfully tries to confront her.

In the Who's The Boss? episode "Winter Break", Samantha is drinking chocolate milk with Bosco to go along with the fluffernutter Tony made.

On the comedy series Night Court, Judge Harold T. Stone (portrayed by Harry Anderson) often expresses his fondness for Bosco.

In the movie The Naked Gun, Leslie Nielsen's narrative voiceover muses that "I just wanted a glass of Bosco and then slip under my blankets".

Bosco Chocolate Syrup was used as fake blood in the shower scene in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and in Night of the Living Dead (1968).[7]

References

  1. ↑ "[image of Bosco syrup bottle]". Bosco. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
  2. ↑ http://www.boscoworld.com/syrups-bars
  3. ↑ Goldberg, Vicki. "It's a Leonardo? It's a Corot? Well, No, It's Chocolate Syrup". The New York Times. 25 September 1998.
  4. ↑ "Just in time for the holidays, a $110,000 syrupy portrait", USA Today, 2007.
  5. ↑ McClellan, Don (26 September 2009). "“Flip the Spoon” rarely remembered". Don McClellan's half-a-century with WSB Television. Retrieved 3 November 2013.
  6. ↑ Gardner, Urban. "Burnishing the Bosco Brand". The Wall Street Journal. 1 August 2011.
  7. ↑ "Bosco Syrup Introduces Mocha Flavored Syrup: The First New Flavor In Nearly A Decade". The Wall Street Journal. 22 April 2013. Retrieved 25 February 2014.

External links