Taylor-Reed Corporation


The Taylor-Reed Corporation was an American food manufacturer and packager that operated from 1939 to approximately 1977. It was founded by two Yale classmates, Malcolm P. Taylor and Charles M. D. Reed, who had worked together on the campus humor magazine The Yale Record. Initially headquartered near Taylor's home in Mamaroneck, New York, the company soon moved operations a few miles away to Crescent Street in Glenbrook, Connecticut, a light-industrial and residential section of Stamford in Fairfield County, Connecticut.
Taylor-Reed specialized in a handful of consumer snack products, notably Cocoa Marsh which they called a "milk amplifier" or "milk booster" and E-Z Pop popcorn. It also manufactured Q-T Instant cake frosting and a variety of bulk institutional foods.

Cocoa Marsh

During its early years, Taylor-Reed's main line of business was packaging sugar and chocolate rations for the War Department. In the postwar years, the company's best-known product was Cocoa Marsh chocolate syrup, which advertised heavily on children's programming in the New York City television market during the 1950s and 1960s. For many years the Taylor-Reed plant, with its Cocoa Marsh billboard was a familiar landmark by the Glenbrook station on the New Haven Railroad.
The company would on occasion issue jars of Cocoa Marsh with a toy surprise hidden in a double top. The regular metal jar cover had an additional white top cover approx. 3/4" tall attached with a white plastic strip. The toy surprise was located in this top cover. Other jars came with the pump cover - which could be re-used on a "refill" jar or the jar with the toy, also a re-fill jar.
After partners Taylor and Reed retired from day-to-day business the company gradually ceased operations as a food manufacturer and began to rent out and finally sell its premises. The factory's main driveway off Crescent Street is now officially designated Taylor Reed Place.

E-Z Pop Patent Infringement Case

In 1963 E-Z Pop figured in a landmark patent-infringement case, with Taylor-Reed as the plaintiff and Mennen Food Products, manufacturer of Jiffy Pop, as the defendant. Taylor-Reed had acquired the patent rights to E-Z Pop popcorn in 1954. The U.S. Court of Appeals, Seventh Circuit, struck down a lower-court ruling that Jiffy Pop's packaging, in particular its expanding-foil pouch, was equivalent to E-Z Pop's. The Appellate Court found that Jiffy Pop's aluminum foil was compressed in a spiral arrangement and this was a significant improvement on E-Z Pop's "button" compression.