Lyons Maid
Encyclopedia
J. Lyons and Co.
J. Lyons & Co. was a market-dominant British restaurant-chain, food-manufacturing, and hotel conglomerate founded in 1887 as a spin-off from the Salmon & Gluckstein tobacco company....
retail organisation.
Well known brands produced by Lyons Maid included: Zoom, Strawberry Mivvie, Orange Maid, Lolly Gobble Choc Bomb, Fab and Haunted House
Haunted House Ice Cream
Haunted house ice cream was produced in the UK by a company called Lyons Maid. It first went on sale in July 1973 and cost 4p.The ice cream itself was white, and a picture was printed on it in edible ink. There were eight pictures in total: Frankenstein's Monster, a spook, a skeleton, a spider and...
.
Its heyday was probably the 1970s when a vast range of ice-lollies were sold. This range often had tie-ins to well-known characters from TV and film and included free gifts. It often involved inventive wrapper designs, and cartoon strips were also launched.
Examples include a tie-in with Space 1999 with free cards of episodes inside the wrapper, Star Wars with free masks of major characters and film facts on the wrappers, The Bionic Man, Superman and even a Goal lolly with lolly sticks containing famous footballers of the day.
The Lyons Maid brand logo, officially known as the 'Good Time Sign', was initially introduced on ice cream vans only but was eventually phased in across the whole product range where it continued to be used on branding and shop signage until Lyons Maid was bought up and absorbed by Nestlé
Nestlé
Nestlé S.A. is the world's largest food and nutrition company. Founded and headquartered in Vevey, Switzerland, Nestlé originated in a 1905 merger of the Anglo-Swiss Milk Company, established in 1867 by brothers George Page and Charles Page, and Farine Lactée Henri Nestlé, founded in 1866 by Henri...
in 1992. At that time, Nestlé combined its standard international blue-and-white ice cream logo with the Lyons Maid logotype and the three dancing children from the Good Time Sign until 1998, when the Lyons Maid brand was dropped in favour of a standardised Nestlé ice cream logo.
Lyons Maid's chief rival was Wall's ice cream
Wall's ice cream
Wall's is a United Kingdom-originated food brand, covering both meat products and ice cream, owned by Unilever. Founded in London in 1786 by butcher Richard Wall, it was acquired in 1922 by Lever Brothers, which became a part of Unilever in 1930. To avoid summer lay-offs due to the down turn in its...
now owned by Unilever
Unilever
Unilever is a British-Dutch multinational corporation that owns many of the world's consumer product brands in foods, beverages, cleaning agents and personal care products....
. Walls produced such staples as Mini Milk and Cornetto
Cornetto (ice cream)
Cornetto is a branded frozen ice cream cone manufactured by Unilever and marketed throughout the world under various company names, but with the same Heartbrand logo.- Manufacturing:...
which is still in production.
In 2008 Lyons Maid was revived when R&R Ice Cream decided to restore the brand. Charlotte Hambling senior marketing managager of R&R stated at the time: “By bringing back the Lyons Maid brand to family dinner tables across the country, we will be tapping into the great nostalgia the brand enjoys, as well as the strong consumer heritage and high levels of consumer awareness and trust within the brand. With our new Lyons Maid products, we are taking advantage of these factors and introducing a range of family favourites, as well as re-establishing the brand".