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Good Humor

ice cream brand

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General referenceInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionJul 26, 2026
Entity authorityQ7314518
Source-derived summary

Good Humor is a Good Humor-Breyers brand of ice cream started by Harry Burt in Youngstown, Ohio, United States, in the early 1920s with the Good Humor bar, a chocolate-coated ice cream bar on a stick sold from ice cream trucks and retail outlets. It was a fixture in American popular culture in the 1950s when the company operated up to 2,000 "sales cars".

History

The original Good Humor company started in Youngstown, Ohio, during the early 1920s and covered most of the country by the mid-1930s. In 1961, Good Humor was acquired by Thomas J. Lipton, the U.S. subsidiary of the international Unilever conglomerate. Profits declined when the baby boomers aged and costs increased because of labor issues, gasoline, and insurance. The company sold its fleet in 1978 but continued to distribute its products through grocery stores and independent street vendors. By 1984, Good Humor had returned to profitability. Starting in 1989, Unilever expanded Good Humor through its acquisition of Gold Bond Ice Cream, which included the Popsicle brand. Four years later, Unilever bought Isaly Klondike and the Breyers Ice Cream Company. As a result, Good Humor-Breyers became a large producer of branded ice cream and frozen novelties, as part of the international Unilever Heartbrand.

Editorial summary

“Good Humor” enters the record as ice cream brand. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Good, Humor and cream can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewA concise reference frame for defining the subject, testing terminology and identifying the institution closest to the evidence. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1961, 1978, 1984, 1989—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1920. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Good, Humor and cream.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Good Humor” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Good, Humor and cream provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 26, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q7314518. None of the 2 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1961, 1978, 1984 and 1989.

Critical limits

A concise general-reference account can conceal disagreements about scope, terminology or the weight assigned to individual sources. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Use the entry as an orientation point, then follow its citations and revision history. Names, dates and institutional relationships should be checked against the original record.

Best used for
  • Subject orientation
  • Search vocabulary
  • Locating named sources
Verify next

The closest primary source, responsible institution and strongest cited specialist reference.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Good Humor”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Good Humor primary sources, Good Humor archive and Good research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Good Humor”?
  2. Which institution is responsible for the underlying evidence?
  3. What terminology or title could unlock a more precise catalogue search?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from Good Humor” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.