And now, from the "TV Dinners Turn me Blue" files and Yahoo! News

(Sudiegirl's note...gee, doesn't that frozen meal look positively...um, well, uh...oh, forget it. I can't believe I used to nag my mother for these things as a kid! At any rate, I am still a TV dinner consumer, as the Banquet ones are on sale at Safeway all the time for a dollar apiece. When you're broke, you go for the gusto in much smaller ways. At any rate, I just found this in today's Yahoo! "Odd News" section, and I just wanna say I reported it first (albeit briefly and tactlessly). Go me! Go me! If you could see me right now, I'm going the white girl "Rhythmless Nation" dance. Anyway, the usual insertions are enclosed. Thank you...)

Father of the TV Dinner dead at 83

By David Schwartz Thu Jul 21, 1:25 PM ET

PHOENIX (Reuters) - Gerry Thomas, the former poultry-company executive who helped marry American television with mealtime as inventor of the TV Dinner, has died at age 83, his family said on Wednesday. (Although with all the preservatives in those dinners, he could feasibly be older, you know? Hey, don't get mad at me...I'm just sayin'...)

Thomas, honored with a Hollywood ceremony in 1999 to mark the 45th anniversary of his innovation, died of cancer at a Phoenix hospice on Monday after a long illness, according to his wife, Susan Mills Thomas.

"He was very proud of the TV Dinner, but it never crossed his mind that he would ever get any notoriety out of it," she told Reuters. "He just ate up the publicity. He was a real ham." (No pun intended, of course...)

A decorated World War II veteran (props to him from Rancho Sudiegirl for that as well), Thomas was a marketing executive at C.A. Swanson & Sons in the 1950s when he conceived of the frozen TV Dinner as a solution to the company's post-Thanksgiving surplus of turkeys. (I feel so...cheated. I thought it was something much more glamorous.) Swanson is now a unit of Pinnacle Foods Corp.

"It was a case of necessity being the mother of invention," Thomas himself recalled during the 1999 Hollywood ceremony at the landmark Grauman's Chinese Theatre. (It just goes to show that nobody is immune to the dilemma of what to do with Thanksgiving leftovers...you can only eat so much turkey salad.)

The TV Dinner not only helped change TV-viewing habits in American homes, it helped transformed Swanson from a poultry company into a major frozen-food manufacturer. (Not to mention the ZZ Top lyric in the title of today's entry...)

The idea of packaging Swanson's turkey surplus as an entree for a frozen meal dawned on Thomas, then 30, during a business trip to Pittsburgh, where he saw a box of single-compartment metal trays that were being tested by an airline as a way of serving heated meals.
Thomas coined the term "TV Dinner" as a marketing gimmick aimed at tapping into public excitement over the then-new broadcast medium. At the time he did not even own a television.
Swanson, encouraged by the success of the pot pies it had introduced in 1951, seized on Thomas' idea, and the TV Dinner debuted nationally in 1954. (Can anyone tell me what TV shows debuted that same year? My memory escapes me as far as that topic is concerned.)

Initially sold for 98 cents (Remember when gas cost that much?), the original TV Dinner featured turkey, corn-bread dressing and gravy, buttered peas and sweet potatoes, all packaged in a three-compartment tray. (You know, I ate those things as a kid, and I never though about how unappetizing they looked until I was an adult. Amazing what a skim of ice will do to the aesthetic appeal of a frozen dinner.)

Grocery distributors were at first reluctant to stock the dinners, as many American homes lacked freezer space. But the product caught on with consumers, and Swanson added frozen fried-chicken later that year. (That is a legitimate concern from back then...my first apartment had a refrigerator/freezer from, like, 1776...the freezer was NOT frost free and was about the size of a shoebox on a good day. Sigh...)

By 1995, production had soared to 25 million TV Dinners per year and kept climbing, the company said. The trademark "TV Dinner" was dropped from Swanson's packaging in 1962 but was brought back in 1999 as part of a promotion centering on its 45th anniversary. (You know what, though? People still call them that. It's like calling all tissues "Kleenex" and all bandages "Band-Aids". Marketing is insidious, huh?)

The Nebraska-born Thomas led a varied career, including stints as a private marketing consultant, art gallery executive and co-founder of a company that produced animal treats. (Oh, my...thank goodness he didn't get the TV dinner and animal treat professions mixed up...or did he?)

Sudiegirl's final opinion?

If you lick a frozen dinner before cooking it, will your tongue stick to it like it would stick to a pole, a la "A Christmas Story"? Just wonderin'.

Gourmandly yours (look it up...)

Sudiegirl