Taylor-Reed corporation

Taylor-Reed Corporation
Founded 1939
Defunct 1980
Headquarters Stamford, Connecticut
Mamaroneck, New York
Products Food

The Taylor-Reed Corporation was an American food manufacturer and packager that operated from 1939 to approximately 1977. It was founded by two Yale classmates (class of 1933), Malcolm P. Taylor (1911-2000) and Charles M. D. Reed (1911-2008), who had worked together on campus humor magazine The Yale Record.[1] Initially headquartered near Taylor's home in Mamaroneck, New York, the company soon moved operations a few miles away to Crescent Street in Glenbrook, Connecticut, a light-industrial and residential section of Stamford in Fairfield County, Connecticut.

Taylor-Reed specialized in a handful of consumer snack products, notably Cocoa Marsh "milk emulsifier" and E-Z Pop popcorn. It also manufactured Q-T Instant cake frosting and a variety of bulk institutional foods.[2]

Cocoa Marsh

During its early years, Taylor-Reed's main line of business was packaging sugar and chocolate rations for the War Department. In the postwar years, the company's best-known product was Cocoa Marsh chocolate syrup, which advertised heavily on children's programming in the New York City television market during the 1950s and 1960s.[3] For many years the Taylor-Reed plant, with its Cocoa Marsh billboard ("Be strong as a lion!") was a familiar landmark by the Glenbrook station on the New Haven Railroad.

After partners Taylor and Reed retired from day-to-day business (about 1970) the company gradually ceased operations as a food manufacturer and began to rent out and finally sell its premises. The factory's main driveway off Crescent St. is now officially designated Taylor Reed Place.

E-Z Pop Patent Infringement Case

In 1963 E-Z Pop figured in a landmark patent-infringement case, with Taylor-Reed as the plaintiff and Mennen Food Products, manufacturer of Jiffy Pop, as the defendant. Taylor-Reed had acquired the patent rights to E-Z Pop popcorn in 1954[4] The US Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, struck down a lower-court ruling that Jiffy Pop's packaging, in particular its expanding-foil pouch, was equivalent to E-Z Pop's. The Appellate Court found that Jiffy Pop's aluminum foil was compressed in a spiral arrangement and this was a significant improvement on E-Z Pop's "button" compression.[5]

External links

References

  1. ↑ Yale Banner & Pot Pourri. New Haven: Yale University Press. 1932. p. 182.
  2. ↑ Obituaries for [Taylor]http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9505E6DF133AF937A25752C0A96F958260 and [Reed]http://www.legacy.com/tcpalm/Obituaries.asp?Page=Notice&PersonID=121551381.
  3. ↑ Much more background information in [this online discussion board.]http://www.roadfood.com/Forums/tm.aspx?high=&m=371475&mpage=1#491733
  4. ↑ Popped Culture: A Social History of Popcorn in America by Andrew F. Smith, 1999 Also see Better Than Homemade, by Carolyn Wyman, 2004.
  5. ↑ Docket number No. 14143, The TAYLOR-REED CORPORATION, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. MENNEN FOOD PRODUCTS, INC., American Home Products Corporation, and Frederick C. Mennen, Defendants-Appellants.