By Ron Evans

The TV Dinner. Possibly the most American invention of all time. And while Swanson TV Dinners weren't the very first frozen meals on the market, they were certainly the first to sweep the nation. They were so popular, in fact, that refrigerator manufacturers even started designing their freezing compartments with these little foil trays of iced meats, taters and troubling desserts in mind. But their invention was almost an accident born of a Thanksgiving miscalculation most fowl…

1952 saw such a hugely successful Thanksgiving concerning turkey sales that the Swanson Co. decided to up the volume of birds available at the supermarkets as T-Day ‘53 was approaching. However, they were more than a bit overzealous with their estimate. To the sum of 261 TONS of excess turkeys. Since these were the earlier days of refrigeration we didn't have the endless sea of cold storage facilities that we do now. So Swanson, thinking fast, made the call to freeze the turkeys and put them on a refrigerated train. This was the largest and cheapest (although still quite spendy) option and as long as the train kept a rollin’, the birds kept from thawin’. The turkeys snaked their way across the eastern United States railroad like chilly Woody Guthries for months while executives at Swanson huddled about what to do with them.

By this time, Birds Eye Frozen Foods already had frozen foods in your grocer's freezer but these were mostly side dishes, veggie medleys and potatoes. Clarence Birdseye was an inventor of many things including the quick-freeze machine that allowed for foods to be flash frozen. This helped the veggies remain crisp and colorful after thawing and cooking. Birdseye later sold his company and patents for $22 million to Goldman Sachs and the Postum Company, which eventually became General Foods Corporation, and which founded the Birds Eye Frozen Food Company.

Clarence Birdseye’s patent for his flash-freezing “Refrigerating Apparatus”

Nobody had thought to sell complete meals in a pre-packaged, self-contained manner until the mid-1940’s when commercial airlines needed a solution for easy storage and cooking of meals on longer flights. The U.S. Military also needed similar accommodations for fueling soldiers out in the field where they would have little more than can openers and small gas stoves. Enter W.L. Maxson Co. who is credited with creating the very first frozen meal, the Stratoplate. This was by all accounts the first “tv dinner” but outside of military and airline contracts, the Stratoplate, in spite of its groovy space-age name, failed to launch. But the groundwork had been laid.

The O.G. The Maxson Stratoplate Airlines Version

Back to the panicked executives at Swanson - they had put out a memo to all of their employees, even the factory workers, looking for any suggestions on what to do with all these turkeys. A salesman by the name of Gerry Thomas recalled that airlines often served meals on metal trays in individual compartments and he suggested that’s what Swanson should do with their turkey surplus. The executives liked the idea and the topic of conversation became...what do we call these meals? Many ideas were tossed around and there seems to be some dispute about this but Thomas claims it was he who had the brilliant light bulb moment. Television.

TV was still a new and rare luxury item at this time but it was growing fast. In fact in 1950 less than 10% of American homes had a television set. By 1954 however, that number had ballooned to more than 50%. And those that didn’t have TVs in their home would often attend television parties hosted by their enviable uppercrust friends, family members and neighbors. Ever wonder why so many family photos taken in the 1950s were posed around the TV set? Now you know. It was the hippest status symbol around, daddio. And Gerry Thomas was well aware of this trend when he thought to tie a food product to it. Make the packaging look like a television, push the idea of the whole family eating them in front of the boob-tube and call them...TV Dinners.

It worked brilliantly. To the tune of ten million dinners sold in just the first year. That first meal? Thanksgiving turkey, with mashed taters, stuffing and gravy and a side of peas with creamy Swanson butter. Thomas was given a fat bonus for not only solving the issue of the excess turkeys, but launching a new era of frozen foods. Soon other meals were added. Salisbury Steak (my personal fave), Fried Chicken Dinner, and a Haddock Dinner. Whatever the hell that is. The biggest addition came in 1960 when Swanson added a fourth compartment for desserts. Now the wife didn’t even have to bake cookies. Yes, all things kitchen and food during this time was marketed directly at women. “Imagine the free time you’ll enjoy while still being a good wife and having a hot meal ready for when he comes home. Don’t worry about when that’ll be - just do it!” Check out the promo below from a 1955 variety show and you’ll see that this is hardly satire.

Then things got exotic. The lingering post WWII era saw a boom in the armchair travel cottage industry. Tiki parties with fake versions of “ethnic foods” flooded the patios and backyards. Exotica records by Les Baxter, Denny Martin and Aurthur Lyman filled the dens with jungle drums, hula dances, and instrumental sitar-heavy versions of pop hits. And Swanson’s International Collection filled the freezers of discerning folk looking for a taste of far off lands. German Dinner with sauerbraten and red cabbage. Mexican Dinner with beef enchiladas and pintos and rice. Chinese Dinner with chicken chow mein and bamboo shoots. English Style Fish n’ Chips with...English style fish n’ chips.

The International Series. Who needs a plane ticket when you have Europe in your “freezing compartment?”

As the years went on Swanson played around with minor adjustments like removable trays for cold desserts, soups and sauces. But the major change came in the 1980s when microwave ovens were suddenly all the rage. Gone was all that metal and foil in lieu of plastic and cellophane. By this time Swanson was hardly the only game in town. Marie Calendars, Banquet and Stouffers all had their own versions. Of course the TV Dinner name was trademarked but even Swanson let that go by the mid-1960s. It seems the fear was the marketing scheme had worked a little too well and people felt they could only eat TV Dinners in front of the TV. As unlikely as that sounds, the name was so popular that many people still refer to frozen dinner as TV Dinners even though that moniker hasn’t been on a label or an advertisement in 50 years.

People were eating in front of the television before TV Dinners of course. Those wobbly fold-up TV trays everyone’s grandparents had? Those were invented two years before the TV Dinner. But their sales skyrocketed after TV Dinners were taking the country by storm. You could simply put your hot from the oven metal encased Salisbury meal on your lap like an animal. Or you could pop-up your very own personal table and eat like a king. Or queen. Or whatever. Salisbury is for everyone after all.

The fold-up TV trays your gramma kept behind the Davenport.

By the 1990s folks were becoming a bit more health conscious about things like processed foods, sodium and MSG. So the popularity of frozen meals began to wane. But the companies all fought back by lowering sodium amounts (lower in this case is still enough to kill a yak), creating smaller single servings and changing the names to things like Healthy Choice and Lean Cuisine. Although some really hung in there with the old school thinking like Hungry-Man. In fact Hungry-Man is really the closest direct line to the original TV Dinner we see on the market today as they were a Swanson product, later acquired by Conagra.

And while the sales of frozen meals have diminished somewhat, the frozen foods industry is far from dying. But many of the companies have switched their focus away from full meals going back to where things started, side dishes, meatballs, chicken nuggets and veggie medleys. It’s hard to say as to whether or not TV Dinners will ever have a comeback - we certainly love our retro marketing campaigns. But odds are high that it’s a thing of kitschy pop-culture history for the most part. After all, does anyone really want an iPad Dinner?