The Quirky 1960s Dessert That Encouraged Kids To 'Shake Shake Shake'

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Among the many cooking trends of the 1960s, which included some wild desserts like the summer salad pie that combined tuna and lemon Jell-O, getting kids into the kitchen was becoming a major one. Food companies saw the rise of women in the workforce and more latchkey children coming home unsupervised as an opportunity to capitalize on kid-friendly foods. Among some of the wilder treats that came out in that decade was a pudding that required children to, literally, do the heavy lifting in order to eat it. It was Shake-A Pudd'n from Royal.

This boxed kit included everything a kid needed to make their own dessert: Four packages of powdered pudding mix, four cups with lids, and spoons. All you had to do was add water and start shaking for around 30 seconds, and then wait five minutes for the pudding to firm up before diving in. Its commercials from this time included a Beach Boys-esque tune with the refrain "Shake, shake, shake." The commercials ended with a hip kid (at least what some advertisement executive considered hip) saying, "What a crazy way to make dessert." When you were done, you just threw everything in the trash (Royal definitely didn't take sustainability into the equation back then).

The Shake-A Pudd'n newspaper ads were equally aimed at trying to be as hip as possible. They used words like "Mod" and claimed Shake-A Pudd'n was "the 'in' thing for the 'now' generation." The pudding came in four flavors: Chocolate, vanilla, banana, and butterscotch. The company also suggested adding other ingredients, such as chopped up candy bars or fruit, to make it even fancier.

Royal, the company that made Shake-A Pudd'n, was the same one famed for its baking powder. The Royal Baking Powder Company was founded in the 1860s and became a huge success before merging in 1929 with Standard Brands, owned by Gilded Age robber baron J.P.  Morgan. The company later expanded into other products. Royal is still around and is now owned by Mondelēz International. But like many discontinued treats from the '60s, such as Astro Pops and Fruit Stripe gum, Shake-A Pudd'n is no longer around. It was scrapped in 1971, apparently no longer hip. Jell-O later made a similar product, Shake-A-Pudding, well into the '80s, but with Bill Cosby as its spokesperson and no one extolling kids to "shake, shake, shake."