By the way, I LOATHE Miracle Whip, which is what I grew up on. After I left home I discovered mayonnaise was something completely different...and I LIKED it. (I'm now a mayonnaise abuser, but there are support groups.)

Back to Jell-o. As a child of the '50s and '60s I endured a lot of that crap...dessert, salad, and even entrée. Definitely a major part of church dinners, meals at relatives' homes, and "Funeral Feasts and Sudden Death Quick Snacks".

In the early '70s my then-husband worked for Atlantic Gelatins, which was part of General Foods -- we're talking Jell-o R&D here -- in Woburn, Massachusetts. I think I threw out all the Jell-o recipe books we had -- I certainly never USED any of them. Wouldn't give Jell-o house room. If I used dessert gelatin mix at all (seldom), it was Royal. Most of the work Ed did was research on why Royal gelatin was so much higher quality than Jell-o...not that General Foods actually followed up on the reports. It was because Royal used better quality raw materials -- hooves and hides. I'm also well aware of how caustic gelatin is -- Ed went through shoes like you wouldn't believe. The gelatin would eat right through the leather.

Some of the research was to create a hand-dispersable, gel in cold water gelatin. They succeeded. It was very successfully test marketed. General Foods management declined to go into production because they were afraid it would sell more than their standard Jell-o. Go figure.

And miniature marshmallows don't taste anywhere near as good as regular sized marshmallows. And canned "fruit cocktail" tastes like crap -- even the cherries. Gawd, the hideous stuff we consumed in the god-forsaken Fifties and Sixties!

Linn