1. The business is named after the guys who started it

We’re going to start off our list with a fun and interesting fact about Baskin Robbins. The name comes from Ivy Robbins who was raised with ice cream all around him, thanks to his dad’s involvement in the business. Burt Baskin is his brother in law who also had his own ice cream chain. Robbins had also opened an ice cream chain, following in his father’s footsteps. The two in-laws got together and combined their businesses and the resulting ice cream chain became Baskin Robbins.

2. The way they chose the name is really funny

Before the two guys made the name of their newly merged business official, they had to decide whether it would be called Robbins Baskin or Baskin Robbins. At first it seemed to be quite the dilemma until they came up with a fair and equitable solution to the problem. They decided that they’d flip a coin to figure out who’s name would go first. As it turned out, Baskin was the winner of the coin toss and as a result he earned the privilege of having his name placed first on the official title of the company.

3. Thirty one is close but there are actually more flavors

Baskin Robbins uses the number 31 to suggest that this is how many flavors of ice cream that they offer on their menus. We’ll have to counter this and say that they do offer a minimum of 31 flavors of ice cream at any one time, but it’s usually more than that. Throughout their history, Baskin Robbins has actually offered over 1,000 different flavors of ice cream, just not all at the same time.

4. They invented the first pralines and cream flavor

Pralines and Cream is a common ice cream flavor currently, but it hadn’t been done by another commercial ice cream chain until these guys came up with it. We discovered this fun fact about Baskin Robbins when were were doing our research. Here’s the story about how it happened. Irv and Irma Robbins thew some pralines that they had into a bowl of vanilla ice cream and they tried it out with a drizzle of caramel on the top. The flavor was so appealing that they knew that they had a winning combination that others were sure to love. This is how the first pralines and cream ice cream flavor was created.

5. They sued a rival over the pralines and cream flavor

We just learned that Baskin Robbins felt very protective over their pralines and cream recipe. When they learned that Haagen Dazs came up with their own version of the flavor, they sued them in 1985. They claimed that they had released their own version of the recipe that had been patented and Haagen Dazs was selling it for a profit. You don’t mess with a Baskin Robbins original recipe. Haagen Dazs learned about that the hard way.

6. Not all of their flavors were sold in stores

There are a lot of different flavors that Baskin Robbins created that you’ll probably never hear about. You’ve got to figure that with more than a thousand creations, not all of them were hits. We learned a few little known facts about their creative side. While they’ve come up with a lot of decidedly winning flavors, some of them were just plain odd and they didn’t even make it past the cutting room floor. A few examples of this include the Lox and Bagels ice cream, the Grape Britain ice cream and the ketchup ice cream.

7. They made a celebratory flavor in 1976

The year that marked the bicentennial of America was a very special year for all of the citizens of our nation. Baskin Robbins honored the occasion by creating a special flavor just to mark the occasion. The name of the ice cream flavor was Valley Forge Fudge. Here’s a fun fact about the major contributor to the design of the flavor. It was none other than President Gerald Ford.

For 200 years, the candy cane came only in one color: white. The red stripes we know today did not appear until the turn of the 20th century.

National Candy Cane Day is celebrated on December 26 in the United States.

Considered a seasonal item, 90 percent of candy canes are sold between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Candy canes are the best-selling non-chocolate candy in the month of December.

Most candy canes are around five inches long, containing only about 50 calories and no fat or cholesterol.

The biggest single week for candy cane sales is the second week in December. This is likely because most people decorate their Christmas trees that week.

While the origins of the candy cane are a bit murky, legend has it that they first appeared in hooked form around 1670. Candy sticks themselves were pretty common, but they really took shape when the choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany got the bright idea of twisting them to look like shepherd’s hooks. He then handed them out to kids during church services to keep them quiet.

According to the National Confectioners Association, about 1.2 billion candy canes are made annually, and 90 percent of those are sold between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

It predates the Big Mac

By more than ten years, as a matter of fact. While McDonald’s and Burger King have both been around since the 1950s, Mickey D’s didn’t introduce the Big Mac until 1968. The Whopper, meanwhile, debuted in 1957, when co-founder Jim McLamore noticed that a rival burger joint was having success with an extra-large burger. He chose the name “Whopper” to automatically conjure thoughts of something big.

Its original price was 37 cents

Ah, how times have changed; when the Whopper first debuted in the 1950s, it would only set you back 37 cents, according to Politico. Today, you’ll get one for an average of $4.19. In celebration of the burger’s 55th anniversary in 2012, the price did drop back down to 55 cents for a brief time. Well, sort of—it was a buy-one-get-one deal.

Whopper or Big Mac?

This seems to be the primary question that American burger aficionados are most inclined to argue about, simply because these are the two most popular burgers at their respective franchises. But in actuality, it’s not an apples to apples comparison. The Whopper, with its quarter-pound patty, is actually much more similar to a McDonald’s Big N’ Tasty, a 1997 addition. Burger King had introduced a Big Mac equivalent with two patties called “the Big King,” also in 1997. Despite each brand’s not-so-veiled attempts to recreate the competitor’s signature sandwich, the primary rivalry between the Whopper and the Mac continues to this day.

It temporarily couldn’t call itself a “Whopper” in one U.S. city

The Burger King franchise ran into a little trouble when it first tried to expand into the San Antonio, Texas, area. A totally separate, unaffiliated chain called “Whopper Burger” held all rights to the name “Whopper” in that area. And this copyright snag actually successfully kept the King out of San Antonio for several years—for the most part. My San Antonio reports that there was, temporarily, a BK open in San Antonio, but it couldn’t drop the W-bomb in any of its advertising. It had to call its famous burger the “Deluxe,” and it didn’t last very long. The dispute was resolved in 1983, when the widow of Whopper Burger’s owner sold the franchise to Pillsbury, who also owned Burger King at the time.

There was once a Halloween version with a black bun

If you’re saying, “Wait, wasn’t it green?” you’re recalling Burger King’s bizarre introduction of a green-tinted “Nightmare King” burger for Halloween 2018. But that wasn’t the chain’s first strangely colored Halloween special, nor was it actually a Whopper. The first oddly colored burger that Burger King introduced, at least to its American customers, came in 2015 with the announcement of the “A1 Halloween Whopper“—a special edition that used A1 Steak Sauce to spook-ify the bun.

Say cheese!

If you’re a Cheesehead living near Green Bay, Wisconsin, you’re one of the lucky few who may have had the chance to try out the latest variation on the Whopper. Last fall, six different Wisconsin locations sold an extra-cheesy Green Bay Whopper with a *whopping* eight slices of American cheese. The Green Bay Whopper was available until December 2.

Whopper, hold the meat, please

As of April 2019, Burger King announced that it would be introducing a… meatless Whopper. No, we’re not kidding—the meatless Whopper will be made with a vegetarian patty supplied by start-up Impossible Foods. The Impossible Whopper, as it will be called, will first be rolled out to 59 Burger Kings in the St. Louis area, according to the New York Times. If consumers like those meatless burgers, we can expect to see the Impossible Whopper expand into every Burger King in the nation.

There was an “Angry” version at one point

In 2009, Burger King released a limited-edition burger called the “Angry Whopper.” In addition to all of the usual Whopper components, this burger also had spicy crispy onions, pepper jack cheese, jalapeños, and a spicy “angry sauce.” Some consumers thought that it wasn’t spicy enough to merit the “angry” descriptor, but that didn’t stop BK from releasing a follow-up: The “Angriest Burger,” with a red-tinged, hot sauce-infused bun, was introduced in 2016.

The Whopper Jr. was a happy accident

In 1963, Luis Arenas-Pérez was opening up a Burger King restaurant in the Puerto Rico municipality of Carolina. Pérez discovered that the shipment of molds for the Whopper buns from the United States hadn’t arrived in time for the grand opening. So he decided to improvise, using the regular-size buns and calling the creation the “Whopper Jr.” The name and the product stuck, and Pérez’s quick thinking and lasting impact on the company earned him a spot in the Burger King Hall of Fame.