Deaths: Charles Sanna and Swiss Miss Cocoa-- Part 3: Name From Laurel and Hardy Film

The airlines eventually cancelled their contracts as the mix was expensive, so Charles returned too the kitchen and reworked the recipe, again with the help of his children. He replaced the whole milk with powdered skim milk which was cheaper and gave the cocoa mix a longer shelf life.

The new product was named Swiss Miss, the title of a film by Laurel and Hardy.  It was marketed with mail-order Swiss Miss dolls and inspired similar mixes by Carnation, Nestle and Hershey.  It was a hit.

To say the least, it was a hit even in Antarctica

Charles Sanna retired and Sanna Dairy was sold to Beatrice Foods in 1967.  Since 1990, Swiss Miss has been a part of Conagra, which says it sells more than 50 million boxes of it each year.

--Cooter

Deaths: Charles Sanna and Swiss Miss Cocoa Mix-- Part 2

"The product had a wonderful flavor," Sanna once wrote, "I believed that it would make an excellent ingredient for a hot cup of cocoa.  To confirm my belief, I consulted the family cookbook."

He tested his recipe with the help of his five children then with the children at a parochial school in his hometown of Menominie, Wisconsin.  Thus Sanna created what became known as Swiss Miss, a powder that when poured into hot water or milk, became a favorite of Americans and even Antarctic explorers.

It launched the instant hot chocolate industry of the early 1960s.

He was trained as a mechanical engineer and began his career maintaining blast furnaces and coke ovens for U.S. Steel.  But he always had an amazing sense of taste and smell.

After figuring out how to turn surplus military milk powder into a delicious beverage, next he had to market it.  His brother Tony Sanna gave it the name Brown Swiss, after a breed of dairy cow, even though Charles used milk from Holstein cows which produce a higher volume of milk with less butterfat.

The mix had some early success after it was sold to airlines.

--Cooter