A family firm, a food-service product and a remark at a tasting.

I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! is an American brand of vegetable-oil spreads and sprays. It came from J.H. Filbert, Inc., a margarine maker in Baltimore, Maryland. A historical note published by Special Collections and University Archives at Virginia Tech, which holds a small collection of the company’s coupons and promotional material from the late 1950s, says the firm was founded by John H. Filbert. The note says his wife, Martha Filbert, later succeeded him as president of the company. She was also the namesake of the company’s Mrs. Filbert’s Margarine, according to the archive.

The spread that gave the company its later fame was developed at the end of the 1970s. Sporked reported in May 2024 that the recipe was developed by the J.H. Filbert company in Baltimore in 1979 as a low-cost alternative to butter, and that it reached shop shelves in 1981. English Wikipedia gives the same dates and adds that the product was originally intended for the food-service industry. The Virginia Tech archive note also dates the product to 1979.

The name is the brand’s story. According to what Sporked called corporate lore, the husband of a secretary at J.H. Filbert tasted the new spread and said, more or less, “I can’t believe it’s not butter!” English Wikipedia tells the same story, describing the name as originating in a comment by the husband of a company secretary as he sampled the product. The remark became a brand name that runs to a full sentence, complete with its own exclamation mark; the brand’s website still writes the name that way.

In its early years the spread was a regional product. Dieline, the packaging-design publication, wrote in December 2019 that the brand was initially available mostly in the Baltimore and Washington, D.C. area. English Wikipedia says the same, describing sales in that period as primarily confined to the Washington and Baltimore region.

Filbert, Unilever, KKR, Upfield and Flora Food Group.

The Virginia Tech archive note says J.H. Filbert was acquired by Unilever in 1986, and English Wikipedia gives the same year. Dieline connects the brand’s wider spread to that change of owner, writing that the spread was available mostly around Baltimore and Washington until Unilever acquired J.H. Filbert. English Wikipedia, citing Carolyn Wyman’s 2004 book Better Than Homemade and Geoffrey Jones’s 2005 history Renewing Unilever, says Unilever took the product across the United States in 1988 and to the United Kingdom, Canada and Mexico in 1991.

In Britain, the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising lists a case study on the brand’s launch among its IPA Effectiveness Awards papers, with a Bronze award in 1996, the agency McCann London and the client Van Den Bergh Foods. The IPA’s summary says the product launched in the UK in 1991 and that the planned television campaign was banned shortly before launch, so the spending was switched to a press campaign built from the television storyboard. The Daily Mirror also dated the brand’s British presence to 1991 in a January 2017 report.

Unilever later sold its whole spreads business. European Supermarket Magazine reported on 16 December 2017 that Unilever had agreed to sell its margarine and spreads business, whose brands included Flora and I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!, to the investment firm KKR, with completion expected in the middle of 2018. The law firm Simpson Thacher, which represented KKR, said in a note dated 16 July 2018 that the transaction closed on 2 July 2018, and listed I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter alongside Becel, Flora, Country Crock, Blue Band, Rama and ProActiv. European Supermarket Magazine reported the completion on 3 July 2018.

The business traded as Upfield; Dieline referred to the brand’s “new owners Upfield” in December 2019. On 17 September 2024, a press release distributed by Business Wire announced that Upfield Group B.V. had changed its name to Flora Food Group B.V., effective immediately at Dutch corporate level and phased in across its markets in the following months. The release said the company is headquartered in Amsterdam and listed I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter among its brands, with Country Crock, Flora, Rama and Violife. The company, called Upfield and since 2024 Flora Food Group, has owned the brand since July 2018.

Design and documentation.

Butter spreads and packaged cheese share a shelf and a set of design problems. A spread is usually sold in a plastic tub with a printed lid, or as wrapped sticks in a small carton; cheese is sold in vacuum-sealed blocks, in slices, in wedges wrapped in foil, or in a round box that holds several portions. In each case the pack is small, handled every day and stored in a refrigerator, so the brand has to read clearly from the front of a lid, the end of a carton or the face of a block.

That is why so much of the identity in this category sits in a few repeated elements: a name in a set type style, a colour that runs across the whole range, and sometimes a drawn character or symbol that customers can find among many similar packs. Behind those elements, the companies themselves may have changed owners, merged or moved production more than once.

Each guide sets out who started the brand, who owns it now, where its products are made and how its packs and advertising have changed, and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Fabio, a crowned successor, a longer name and a return to the original.

A brand name that is a full sentence has to be said aloud, and the brand’s advertising has leaned on that. A familiar face in that advertising is Fabio. Sporked wrote in May 2024 that Fabio had been the product’s spokesperson since 1994, and English Wikipedia gives the same year, adding that in many of the commercials his single line was the brand name itself.

The brand later staged a public search for a successor. The New York Observer reported on 16 June 2006 that Fabio presided over a press event in Madison Square Park, in heavy rain, at which soap-opera actors competed to become the brand’s new spokesman. A panel of judges, the paper said, crowned Greg Vaughan of General Hospital, basing the decision on the enthusiasm of a crowd dressed in yellow ponchos. An executive from the brand told the paper that Fabio was “really part of the family”.

The name has also been tested in Britain. The Daily Mirror reported on 21 January 2017 that the UK spread was getting a makeover and a new name, “I Can’t Believe It’s So Good… For Everything!”, and quoted Unilever’s brand manager Pedro Costa as saying the change was meant to drive home how versatile the product is. English Wikipedia says the rebrand was greeted with puzzlement by media commentators and that the name was later shortened to “I Can’t Believe It’s So Good…”.

The experiment did not last. Dieline’s Rudy Sanchez wrote on 9 December 2019 that the rebranding to “I Can’t Believe It’s So Good…For Everything” had left consumers perplexed, and that the brand had decided to go back to the original name and restore the playful branding that had been a core part of the I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! identity. English Wikipedia dates the return of the original form to November 2019.

The range today spans more than a tub. English Wikipedia describes a spray-bottle version alongside the regular and light spreads, and says Unilever announced two further varieties in 2017 under the lines “It’s Vegan” and “It’s Organic”. The brand’s American website, read in October 2026, lists spreads, sprays and sticks, and a recipe section presented with the chef Gordon Ramsay.

For a design guide, I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter! shows how a brand can turn a spoken reaction into its whole identity, keeping the exclamation mark and the conversational tone even through a change of owner and a short-lived rename. Compare it with Country Crock, its American stablemate at Flora Food Group, and Hellmann’s, a Unilever food brand from the same grocery aisle. For this guide we use sunny yellow, exclamation blue, toast cream and deep navy with a casual script, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter!’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.