From cream-style corn to a giant on a can of peas.

Green Giant began as a local cannery on the Minnesota River. English Wikipedia and MNopedia, the Minnesota Historical Society’s online encyclopedia, both say the Minnesota Valley Canning Company was founded in 1903 in Le Sueur, Minnesota. MNopedia, in an entry by Eric W. Weber, says the company was a venture of local investors, who were persuaded to build a cannery by John Silver Hughes, a salesman and canner who had already started canneries in Wisconsin and Michigan and who ran the Le Sueur line for two years. In its first years the company canned only white cream-style corn; it added peas in 1907, and for most of the next three decades, MNopedia says, it canned only peas and corn. Wikipedia says the company sold its canned vegetables under the name “Le Sueur Z” from 1903, and that “Le Sueur” on its own was first used in 1933.

The man who shaped the business for decades was Ward Cosgrove, who joined the board in 1914, became company secretary and, MNopedia says, directed the company for nearly four decades. He set up a research department and made it policy to sell the whole of each year’s pack. In 1925, MNopedia says, Cosgrove brought back from England a large, tender pea he wanted to call the Green Giant; Wikipedia names the variety as the Prince of Wales and dates “Green Giant Great Big Tender Peas” to the same year. According to MNopedia, the patent office told him the name was not descriptive enough to register as a trademark, and the company’s lawyer suggested creating a giant to go with it.

The company kept refining the canning itself. MNopedia says that in 1929 it developed a process for vacuum-packed corn sold as Niblets, and that in 1934 its research team produced a “heat unit” method which, the company claimed, could predict the moment a field was ripe. In 1950 the Minnesota Valley Canning Company changed its name to the Green Giant Company, taking the name of the character on its labels.

Pillsbury, General Mills, B&G Foods, Seneca.

After the war the company grew beyond the can. MNopedia says Green Giant began marketing frozen vegetables in 1961, including whole ears of corn under the Niblets name, and that in the 1960s it diversified into garden centres and restaurants before ending those ventures in the 1970s. The company then merged with Pillsbury in 1979. When General Mills bought Pillsbury in 2001, Green Giant became a division of the larger Minneapolis group — the same transaction that took the Pillsbury name itself to General Mills.

General Mills sold the brand in 2015. MNopedia says B&G Foods acquired all the Green Giant brands that year, and Wikipedia lists Le Sueur among them. The ownership has since moved again in the United States. In a press release dated 2 March 2026, Seneca Foods Corporation of Fairport, New York, announced that it had bought the Green Giant U.S. frozen business from B&G Foods, including the Green Giant brand and associated intellectual property, US frozen inventory and frozen-vegetable manufacturing operations in Yuma, Arizona. The release said Seneca had also signed a supply agreement for certain Green Giant frozen products made by B&G Foods in Irapuato, Mexico, and that the deal followed Seneca’s purchase of the Green Giant U.S. shelf-stable vegetable line from B&G Foods in November 2023. Paul Palmby, Seneca’s president and chief executive, was quoted saying that with the acquisition the Green Giant shelf-stable and frozen businesses were “back together”.

Seneca Foods has owned the Green Giant brand in the US since 2026, and its own release lists Green Giant alongside Libby’s, Aunt Nellie’s and Seneca among its labels. Wikipedia’s infobox likewise names Seneca Foods as the current owner and lists Pillsbury, General Mills and B&G Foods as previous owners.

Design and documentation.

Canned and shelf-stable meal brands in general live or die on a few square inches of label. A can or a box sits in a long run of near-identical shapes on a pantry shelf, so the label has to do the work that a bottle’s silhouette or a shop’s window might do elsewhere: a band of colour that can be spotted from the end of an aisle, a name set large enough to read at a glance, and a picture of what is inside.

Many of these brands also lean on a face or a figure — a mascot, a cartoon character or a portrait of a cook or founder — and those images can outlast several owners, or be redrawn and retired as tastes change. Colour coding often does quieter work, telling one variety from another within the same range.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its food is made and how its labels and characters have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A scowling giant who learned to smile.

The Giant did not start out jolly. MNopedia says the first giant printed on cans of peas looked angry and threatening and was not green; Wikipedia describes him as a scowling caveman wearing a bearskin and links the idea to the Brothers Grimm tale Der Bärenhäuter. According to MNopedia, in 1928 the company changed the giant’s skin from white to green and added foliage to his outfit. In 1935, both sources say, Leo Burnett reworked the character: Wikipedia, quoting a description of the change, says he traded the bearskin for a leafy suit, gave the Giant a smile and put the word “Jolly” in front of his name, and MNopedia says the figure eventually became associated with all of the company’s products.

Television made the Giant’s voice part of the brand. The two sources give different dates for his screen debut: Wikipedia says he first appeared on television in 1954, while MNopedia dates it to 1961. Wikipedia says the booming “Ho, ho, ho” became his signature line in 1961, and names Elmer Dresslar Jr. as a voice of the character. A smaller companion followed: Wikipedia says the Little Green Sprout has appeared since 1972, while MNopedia dates Little Sprout’s first appearance to 1973. In 2005, Wikipedia says, the Giant was among the mascots in MasterCard’s “Icons” commercial broadcast during Super Bowl XXXIX.

The character also stands beside the road. Wikipedia, drawing on the autobiography of local radio owner Paul Hedberg, says the 55-foot fibreglass statue in Blue Earth, Minnesota, was his idea; in 1977 he approached Green Giant’s president, Thomas H. Wyman, who agreed provided the money was raised locally and the company approved the design. The statue was made by Creative Display of Sparta, Wisconsin, shown in 1978 for the opening of the town’s stretch of Interstate 90 and set on its permanent base on 6 July 1979; the town’s summer festival is called Giant Days.

For a design guide, Green Giant shows how a mascot created to solve a trademark problem can become the company’s name, its colour and its voice. Compare it with Del Monte, another American canned-vegetable label, and Libby’s, which Seneca Foods also sells. For this guide we use valley green and deep leaf on pea pod with a slab serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Green Giant’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.