Fact for the day: Some personalities are born, while others are cooked up. The latter was the case with Betty Crocker. In October 1921, the Washburn-Crosby Co. (which would later evolve into General Mills) advertised a contest giveaway in the back of The Saturday Evening Post. In order to get a pincushion shaped like the company’s principal product — Gold Medal Flour — 30,000 readers completed a cut-out puzzle of townspeople rushing past a Gold Medal sign. Lots of the finished puzzles were bundled with letters containing baking queries from women. At the time, the Gold Medal advertising department had an all-male staff, while the home services personnel (initially charged with developing recipes and giving demonstrations) were entirely female. For a while, the advertising team responded to the letters, seeking insight from the home services staff. But advertising manager Samuel Gale thought the women writing in would rather hear from another woman, so he had his reports invent a
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