Campbell's Chicken Noodle

How A Flubbed Line On A 1930s Radio Showh Elped Create America’s Most Popular Soup.

- Robert Klara

Food companies usually have the R&D department to thank for a product that wins its way into American stomachs. In the case of Campbell’s Chicken Noodle soup, the thanks must also go a radio actor named Freeman Gosden.

Don’t know him? Well, if you lived in prewar America, you would. Gosden voiced the Amos character on Amos ’n’ Andy, one of the most popular radio shows of the 1930s. Broadcast from WMAQ in Chicago, the program—a minstrel show that subsequent generations would later realize was in poor taste—had no shortage of sponsors. In those early days of broadcast, it was common for actors to read for the commercial breaks, too. This is how, during one show in 1938, Gosden extolled the virtues of a fine flavor from Campbell’s soup called Noodle with Chicken.

Only Gosden didn’t call it that—he flubbed his line and called it Chicken Noodle.

At home, in the teeth of the Great Depression, millions of Americans thought that a 10-cent can of Chicken Noodle soup sounded awfully good. Within days, grocers besieged the Campbell Soup Co. with orders.