If you ’ve been bunk the heating this summertime by relish a flavored methamphetamine hydrochloride papa or two , you ’re certainly not alone : More thantwo billionPopsicles are sell every year — and it ’s all thanks to an easily distrait 11 - year - old boy .
As the prescribed Popsicle history goes , in 1905 , young Frank Epperson of San Francisco was using a stirring stick to unthaw pulverized drink mix into urine when something else caught his attention . He tend off , forget the concoction on his porch . It was a particularly parky dark , and when Epperson rediscovered the drink in the aurora , it was a fixed mass of relish with a commodious arouse stick handle protruding from it .
Skeptics are n’t so sure that it really happened that way , sayingthat temps in San Francisco simply did n’t miss low enough to freeze anything back in 1905 . But even if it ’s just a good atomic number 59 story , there is a nugget of trueness : Epperson did , indeed , invent the Popsicle . After years of making the glacial dainty for friends , and eventually his own kid , Epperson filed for a patent in 1923 . Though he had been calling his creations “ Eppsicles , ” he change the name for the patent of invention because his nestling alwaysaskedfor “ Pop ’s sicles . ”
“ Popsicle ” is a trademarked name , by the way — and because it ’s well on its way to becoming a genericized stylemark , Unilever vigorously defends it . mass ’s Popsicles , a Brooklyn business that makes artisanal frosting pops with seasonal fruit , found this out thehard wayin 2010 . After a threatening cease - and - refrain from Unilever , the society changed its name to “ People ’s Pops . ”
Unfortunately , Epperson and his family are n’t the unity benefiting from the brand name these days . After take a smasher in the stock market crash of 1929 , Frank Epperson sell the patent of invention . " I was flat broke and had to liquidate all my assets , " he latersaid . " I have n’t been the same since . "
