Margarine, which was originally named oleomargarine, was developed in the second half of the nineteenth century by Hippolyte Mège-Mouriès. Butter was in short supply and Napoleon offered a prize for anyone who could create a butter substitute. Hippolyte’s “oleomargarine” was made with beef tallow and skimmed milk (and a somewhat involved process) but produced something very similar to butter that was cheaper and more readily available, helping to lessen the impact of the butter shortage.

As time wore on, processes became more advanced and cheap vegetable oils (for a long time, partially hydrogenated, produce trans fats) were used to make margarine instead of animal fats. This was especially exacerbated by the various shortages of the second World War. However, once butter became widely available again, the attraction of margarine waned.

Then Science came to the rescue with the utterly incorrect and now-discredited but then-widely-believed hypothesis that cholesterol causes heart disease . Butter has plenty of cholesterol, but margarines made from plant oils don’t. Talk about a marketing win for margarine!

The only problem was that it didn’t taste nearly as good as butter. Then in 1979 the J.H. Filbert company came to the rescue with a margarine that actually tasted like butter and one of the greatest product names that ever named a product. Here’s the ad I remember seeing as a child when this was new:

I think it’s a great pity that more products aren’t named this way. Imagine how well Hydrox might have sold if, instead of something that sounding like a villain that G.I. Joe defeated on a regular basis they had been called “I Can’t Believe They’re Not Oreos.”