Most of us know the things Kansas City is famous for. Barbecue. Jazz. The Chiefs. Fountains. And, of course, the ongoing need to explain to people from other parts of the country that Kansas City is actually in two states.
But some of Kansas City’s most interesting contributions aren’t nearly as well known.
Over the years, ideas and products developed right here in the Kansas City area have found their way into restaurants, movie theaters, grocery stores, cars and homes across America. Some are so familiar today that it’s hard to imagine somebody actually had to invent them.
Here are 10 with surprising Kansas City connections.
1. The Happy Meal
Millions of parents have Kansas City to thank—or perhaps blame—for all those little toys scattered around their homes.
Kansas City advertising executive Bob Bernstein developed the Happy Meal concept for McDonald’s in the late 1970s. The inspiration reportedly came while watching his young son stare at the pictures on a cereal box during breakfast. Bernstein realized that children might enjoy having something entertaining to look at while they ate, which eventually led to the colorful Happy Meal box, children’s meal and surprise inside.
The concept was tested in Kansas City and several other markets before McDonald’s rolled it out nationally in 1979.
2. The Bomb Pop
Few things say summer quite like a red, white and blue Bomb Pop—and that frozen treat was created right here in Kansas City.
D.S. Abernethy and James S. Merritt of Merritt Foods invented the Bomb Pop in 1955. Its distinctive six-finned shape was intended to resemble a bomb, while its patriotic colors fit perfectly with the mood of 1950s America.
More than 70 years later, it’s still a staple of swimming pools, ballparks, ice cream trucks and summer afternoons across the country.
3. The Bumper Sticker
Apparently Kansas Citians weren’t satisfied with simply driving cars. We also wanted to tell the person behind us where we’d been, whom we supported and occasionally what we thought about absolutely everything.
The modern bumper sticker is generally credited to Kansas City printer Forest P. Gill, who began producing adhesive-backed promotional stickers in the 1940s. Tourism destinations quickly realized that automobile bumpers were essentially traveling billboards.
The idea took off, and American roadways haven’t been quite the same since.
4. The Multiplex Movie Theater
There was a time when going to the movies meant a theater showed one movie on one screen.
Kansas City theater owner Stan Durwood helped change that. In the 1960s, Durwood divided a Kansas City-area theater into multiple auditoriums, allowing different movies to be shown at the same location. His company eventually became AMC Theatres.
Today, the multiplex concept is so normal that an entire generation has probably never considered that movie theaters once worked any other way.
5. The Crock-Pot
That slow cooker sitting in millions of American kitchens has an important Kansas City connection too.
Kansas City-based Rival Manufacturing acquired a small bean-cooking appliance and redesigned and marketed it as the Crock-Pot in the early 1970s. The timing was nearly perfect as more women were entering the workforce and families were looking for convenient ways to have dinner ready at the end of the day.
The Crock-Pot became a household phenomenon and helped change the way generations of Americans prepared meals.
6. Wish-Bone Salad Dressing
Yes, even your refrigerator door has a Kansas City connection.
Wish-Bone dressing traces its roots to a Kansas City restaurant operated by Phillip Sollomi and his family. Their Italian-style dressing became so popular with customers that demand eventually grew far beyond the restaurant itself.
The brand ultimately became nationally distributed, and Wish-Bone dressing can now be found in grocery stores across the country.
7. A Better Way to Coat M&M’s
Kansas City didn’t invent M&M’s, but local researchers helped improve the process that gives them one of their most recognizable characteristics.
Researchers at Kansas City’s Midwest Research Institute—known today as MRIGlobal—developed technology that improved the process used to coat enormous quantities of the candy. The specialized equipment could coat thousands of pounds of chocolate every hour.
So while the famous slogan about melting in your mouth instead of your hand wasn’t born here, Kansas City science helped make producing all those colorful candy shells a lot more efficient.
8. The Kansas City Style of Barbecue
Kansas City obviously didn’t invent barbecue. People had been cooking meat over fire for thousands of years before we showed up.
But Kansas City barbecue as its own distinctive style did develop here.
In the early 1900s, Henry Perry began selling smoked meats from an outdoor pit in Kansas City. Other legendary pitmasters followed, and over time the city developed its own barbecue identity—slow-smoked meats, a wide variety of cuts and the thick, sweet and tangy sauces now associated with Kansas City barbecue.
Today there are more than 100 barbecue restaurants around the metro, and people travel from around the world specifically to eat what started here.
9. Walt Disney’s First Animation Studio
Mickey Mouse wasn’t technically born in Kansas City, but something arguably just as important was: Walt Disney’s career as an animator.
Disney lived in Kansas City as a young man and in 1921 started Laugh-O-Gram Films, his first animation company. The studio ultimately failed financially, but the experience helped shape the ideas and techniques Disney would later take with him to California.
There’s even a wonderful Kansas City story about Disney befriending a mouse around his studio that may have helped inspire a certain famous character years later.
Before Disneyland, Disney World or Mickey Mouse became household names, there was a young Walt Disney trying to make cartoons in Kansas City.
10. The Modern Haunted House
Here’s one I certainly wouldn’t have guessed.
Kansas City played an important role in developing the modern commercial haunted-house experience. When Edge of Hell opened in the West Bottoms in 1975, it helped pioneer the “open format” haunted attraction in which visitors moved through an immersive environment rather than simply following a traditional predetermined path.
Kansas City’s old industrial buildings proved to be almost perfect for elaborate haunted attractions, and the city eventually developed a national reputation for them.
Apparently we aren’t satisfied with feeding visitors barbecue. We like frightening them afterward, too.
Kansas City Has Always Been an Idea Town
What I find interesting about this list is how varied it is. Food, advertising, entertainment, manufacturing, science and even haunted houses have all been influenced by ideas that came out of Kansas City.
We sometimes think of innovation as something that happens on the coasts or in places like Silicon Valley. But Kansas City has quietly been inventing, building and creating things for generations.
And that’s one of the things I enjoy about living and working in this city. You can spend your entire life here and still discover something about Kansas City that makes you say:
“I had no idea that started here.”