Amazo Instant Dessert

Amazo Instant Dessert debuted instant puddings to the American public in 1948, via a patented manufacturing process that pressure-cooked the cornstarch-based powdered mix. Housewives were promised a dessert that could be prepared in a mere 30 seconds, requiring neither cooking nor cooling—“Presto! Amazo! Creamy, cold and ready to eat!” footnote

Reviews of Amazo were mixed, at best. The New York Times praised its ease of preparation and complimented the “creamy” texture and “delicate” flavor, footnote while Consumers Report sharply disagreed, stating, “In CU's taste tests all flavors […] of the pudding were judged rather pasty; tasters found the vanilla pudding unpleasantly sweet and the butterscotch lumpy.” footnote A retrospective article from 1989 puts it a little more colorfully:

“The stuff would go through a curing process, like concrete. If you ate it too soon, it had the consistency of wet cement. If you waited too long, it developed into something very much like wallpaper cleaner. There was a window there where Amazo actually tasted like real pudding.” footnote

No matter—due in part to its patent, Amazo enjoyed a monopoly in the instant pudding market until the early ‘50s, when competitors like Royal and Jell-O introduced their own instant pudding mixes. footnote

The box of Amazo displayed here was a part of the company’s 1955 “Magic Amazo” promotion, which featured the famed illusionist Milbourne Christopher as “Amazo the Great” in a series of TV commercials. The campaign included a free trading card in every box of Amazo, which demonstrated how to do a Christopher-endorsed magic trick. footnote Despite the marketing push, Amazo was off the shelves a few years later and eventually was sold to Jell-O. footnote