When you think about peanut butter, you probably envision creamy ground peanuts that scoop up from jars using a knife or spoon. But several inventors had a different idea. Why not cut out the jar and knife and just have the peanut butter ready in pre-spread slices to put into the sandwich? And so, the concept of sliced peanut butter has been tried again and again over the past fifty years, with little success. So was sliced peanut butter an idea introduced before its time? Or was it simply lazy? This is the strange history of sliced peanut butter, the convenience product that never quite caught on.
0:00: Intro
0:57: Peanut Butter History
1:53: Sliced Peanut Butter Origins
4:18: PB Slices
5:42: PJ Squares
6:54: Where Did Things Go Wrong?
8:13: The Future of Sliced Peanut Butter?
8:44 Outro and Sources
Sources:
USPTO Trademark and Patent Records
“Peanut Butter,” Washington Post, The San Francisco Call, Dec 27, 1899
“Peanuts Yield a Bonanza of Flavor,” Virginia Heffington, The Miami Herald, Jun 11, 1967
“Sliced Peanut Butter…Might Get Its Chance,” The Chicago Daily News, The Miami News, May 22, 1975
“Peanut Butter Celebrates 100-Year Anniversary,” R.B. Fallstrom, AP, Portage Daily Register, Apr 16, 1990
“OSU Thinks It’s Discovered the Greatest Thing Since Sliced Bread…Sliced Peanut Butter,” Omer Gillham, Tulsa World, Feb 16, 2000
“More A-Peeling Peanut Butter?” Barbara Palmer, The Daily Oklahoman, Mar 28, 2000
“Sliced Peanut Butter to Debut,” AP, The Daily Oklahoman, Jul 17, 2001
“P.B. Slices Tear Into the Market, but Not the Bread!” Henryetta Daily Free-Lance, Oct 2, 2001
“The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread,” David Stires, FORTUNE Magazine, Oct 29, 2001
“The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread?” Ameet Sachdev, Knight Ridder News Service, Press Enterprise, Dec 12, 2001
“Viewpoint: Care for a Slice of Peanut Butter on Your Bread?” Peter Moore, The Charlotte Observer, Sep 3, 2002
“Commentary: PJ Squares: Convenience or Laziness?” Leonard Pitts, Chicago Tribune, Nov 18, 2003
“A Brief History of Peanut Butter,” Kate Wheeling, Smithsonian Magazine, Jan 2021