85 Wonder-ful years: Indiana's culinary gift to the world.

• Author: Kaelble, Steve
• Position: Wonder bread product - Company overview

INDIANAPOLIS WAS THE birthplace of Wonder bread 85 years ago. It may be derided by some these days because of its lack of wholegrain nutrition, but it was truly an innovative product that grew into an American pop-culture icon.

Back in 1921, the local Taggart Baking Co. was making plans to sell its new 1.5-pound loaf of bread, one of the first prepackaged, mass-produced breads on the market. Vice president Elmer Cline was trying to figure out how to market the new product when an idea came to him out of the sky.

It wasn't necessarily divine inspiration, but rather an international balloon race held at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway. When Cline saw the sky speckled with hundreds of colored balloons, he was filled with a sense of wonder. One thing led to another, and the new bread was named Wonder and packaged with its highly recognizable red, blue and yellow balloons. As the story goes, Wonder bread outsold all other breads in its first week on the market, and within a few years the brand was purchased and taken national by Continental Baking Co.

The wonders of Wonder bread didn't cease. In the early 1930s, Wonder picked up and ran with an idea pioneered a few years earlier by a small Missouri bakery--sliced bread--and sold the nation on the concept. Interestingly, Americans at first weren't so sure that sliced bread really was a great thing; consumers were suspicious and slow to warm up to the idea. But the concept caught fire not long before World War II broke out and caused shortages of metal bread-slicing blades, forcing a temporary return to unsliced bread.

Wonder also brought innovation to its baking processes and nutritional formulations. It pioneered a new process that eliminated the holes in bread. It also added vitamins and minerals, leading to the slogan "Wonder Bread...