A cereal company, a kitchen icon and a pouch for the microwave.

Pop Secret is an American brand of microwave popcorn. It was created by General Mills, and it first reached shoppers under another of that company’s names. English Wikipedia, citing a grocery advertisement printed in a Texas newspaper in November 1985, says the product launched that autumn in two flavours, butter and natural, as “Betty Crocker’s Pop Secret”. The same article quotes New York magazine from January 1988 saying General Mills “came on strong” with Pop Secret in January 1986, which places the national push early in that year.

The timing mattered. The New York Times, in a business-section report of 22 June 1987 headlined “Microwave Key to Popcorn War”, described microwave popcorn as a contest between big food companies. It said Pillsbury had introduced a frozen microwave popcorn in 1982 and that Orville Redenbacher, a unit of Beatrice, had moved into microwave products in 1983. By the time of the report, the paper listed five major brands in the category: Pillsbury’s Microwave Popcorn, General Mills’ Pop Secret, American Pop Corn’s Jolly Time, Nabisco’s Planters Premium Select and Beatrice’s Orville Redenbacher. Smaller makers had joined too, it said, including the food company of the actor Paul Newman.

The Times called the product “General Mills’ Betty Crocker Pop Secret”, and the Betty Crocker name carried the pitch. According to the paper, General Mills promoted Pop Secret as suited to any microwave oven, whatever its wattage, and said more of its kernels would pop than its rivals’ did. The report added that competitors disputed the point, because the packaging across the category was broadly the same: specially treated, cellophane-wrapped pouches made for the microwave. Donald L. Knutzen, then general manager of the General Mills snack food division, told the paper the product was “easily the hottest microwave product General Mills has ever introduced.”

The name itself made a promise. English Wikipedia says the early advertising implied that the “secret” to popping more of the kernels in the bag was something the Betty Crocker kitchen knew and others did not. The Times report noted that all of the large brands had by then introduced salt-free versions as well, so the variety on the shelf was widening even in the first years of the category.

General Mills, Diamond Foods, Snyder’s-Lance, Campbell and Our Home.

Pop Secret stayed with General Mills for a little over two decades. In September 2008 it changed hands. NutritionInsight reported on 17 September 2008 that Diamond Foods had completed its acquisition of the Pop Secret popcorn business from General Mills. Diamond was then known for culinary nuts and snacks sold under the Diamond and Emerald brands. English Wikipedia notes that the sale ended Pop Secret’s use of the Betty Crocker name, which General Mills kept.

Under Diamond the brand reached a new kind of shelf. The Orlando Sentinel reported on 15 September 2015 that Pop Secret had become the official popcorn of Walt Disney World and Disneyland under a “strategic alliance agreement” announced by Diamond Foods. Pop Secret popcorn was to be sold from carts in the parks, the paper said, and the brand would become title sponsor of the nightly Fantasmic! show at Disney’s Hollywood Studios and sponsor movie nights at Disney resort hotels.

Diamond itself was then sold. A 29 February 2016 release from Snyder’s-Lance, the Charlotte, North Carolina snack maker, announced the completion of its acquisition of Diamond Foods, adding Pop Secret popcorn alongside Kettle potato chips, Emerald snack nuts and Diamond of California culinary nuts. Food Business News reported on 9 August 2016 that Snyder’s-Lance had begun “renovation” plans for Pop Secret. Chief executive Carl E. Lee Jr. told analysts that the company would expand the Disney partnership, launch a new marketing programme and play up the popcorn’s quality and taste.

The owner changed again within two years. USA Today reported on 18 December 2017 that Campbell Soup had agreed to buy Snyder’s-Lance, which it described as the maker of Snyder’s of Hanover pretzels, Kettle chips and Pop Secret popcorn. Campbell announced on 26 March 2018 that it had completed the deal and formed a new US snacks unit, Campbell Snacks; its release listed Pop Secret among the group’s brands.

The most recent sale came in 2024. Campbell announced on 26 August 2024 the completed sale of the Pop Secret popcorn business to Our Home, which it described as an independent better-for-you snack company, and did not disclose the terms. Chris Foley, president of Campbell’s Snacks, called the sale another step in focusing the division’s portfolio. Just Food reported the same month that Our Home, owner of the Popchips brand, was, like Campbell, based in New Jersey; its founder and chief executive, Aaron Greenwald, said the purchase marked Our Home’s expansion into microwave popcorn. Our Home has owned Pop Secret since 2024.

Design and documentation.

The brands in this group sell everyday things from the grocery aisle: microwave popcorn, hot cocoa, apple juice, applesauce, orange juice and iced tea. Their packaging comes in very different forms, from flat paper bags that open out in a microwave and tins or canisters of cocoa powder to juice cartons, plastic bottles and boxes of tea bags, and each format gives a designer a different surface to work with.

A bag, a canister, a carton and a box all have to carry the same few things: a name that can be read from a distance, a picture or colour that signals the flavour, and the instructions and legal text a food label needs. How those elements share the space says a good deal about how a brand wants to be seen on the shelf.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — who started the brand, who owns it now, where its products are made and how its packaging has changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

A borrowed kitchen name, a stock car race, coloured kernels and popcorn carts.

For its first two decades Pop Secret sat under a borrowed name. The Times in 1987 used “Betty Crocker Pop Secret” as the product’s full title, and English Wikipedia describes the launch name as “Betty Crocker’s Pop Secret”. The word “secret” did the selling: in the account Wikipedia gives, the advertising suggested that the knack of getting more kernels to pop belonged to the Betty Crocker kitchen. When Diamond Foods bought the business in 2008, the Betty Crocker name stayed with General Mills, and Pop Secret had to stand on its own.

The brand also spent money on visibility away from the grocery aisle. English Wikipedia says Pop Secret sponsored a NASCAR race at Rockingham Speedway in North Carolina called the Pop Secret Microwave Popcorn 400, and then, from 2004, the Pop Secret 500 at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, California. The same article says that in the early 1990s the brand sold a coloured popcorn called Pop Qwiz, in yellow, blue and green, with a mystery bag holding a surprise colour.

The Disney deal of 2015 put the name on a different kind of surface. As the Orlando Sentinel described it, the agreement put Pop Secret on popcorn carts inside the parks and on the title of a nightly show, a long way from the supermarket box. Snyder’s-Lance kept the Disney connection when it took over, telling analysts in 2016 that it would widen the partnership to reach more shoppers.

For a design guide, Pop Secret shows how a grocery product can begin inside a larger master brand and then carry on alone through a run of owners, from General Mills to Our Home. Compare it with Orville Redenbacher, the rival the Times set it against in 1987, and with Jolly Time, the Iowa family brand that shared the same early microwave shelf. For this guide we use secret blue, butter yellow and popped white with a heavy display sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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