How Did Popcorn Become a Popular Snack at the Movies?

It is nearly impossible - if not entirely impossible - to enter a movie theater without the smell of buttery popcorn infilitrating your nose.

Popcorn did not just pop up one day and suddenly become the most beloved movie snack. There is a history involved with the tight knit relationship between eating popcorn and heading to the movie theater.

Beginning of Popcorn Sales

Back when movies first started, popcorn was usually sold outside by street vendors. The movie patron would purchase their popcorn and take it into the theater to enjoy while they watched the movie.

If you have ever had people over to your house and served popcorn, you know that it can make a gigantic mess. The mess is even worse when you have a bunch of people sitting in the darkness munching on snacks that you cannot hear if they fall to the ground! Not only do the actual pieces of popcorn cause a disaster, but the grease is destructive as well. Therefore, it is probably no shock that movie theater owners and employees were not too thrilled with the idea of popcorn at the start.

However, as we know, money is a major motivating force behind so much. The movie theater owners saw that the street vendors were selling popcorn, and they realized that they could make the money off of the sales instead of these vendors. And so popcorn took its first steps toward becoming a popular movie snack.

Charles Manley, an inventor from Butte, Indiana created the electric popcorn machine in 1925. His invention, coupled with the movie industry's desire to sell these snacks inside, were a perfect pair. Manley knew to market them to movie theatre owners, and the owners ate it up.

Great Depression

Shortly after this great American romance between popcorn and movies was formed, the Great Depression took over society. Yet this relationship did not suffer. Although we now pay ridiculous prices for even just a small bag of popcorn at the movies, it is so cheap for the theater to buy. Once they purchase the popcorn, there are no additional costs associated with cooking it. They just put it into the popcorn machine.

During the Great Depression, not only was the popcorn cheap to buy and produce, but the movie theaters were selling it for very low prices. It was one of the few snacks that a person could afford to buy during that time period. Sales of popcorn actually went up during the Great Depression.

Today

By the 1950s, the sales of popcorn at movies were greater than the sales of movie tickets. Clearly, popcorn has become a popular snack at the movies. When we go to the movies, we tend to complain about how much it costs to buy a simple bag of popcorn, yet we continue to do it anyway. Why is that exactly? Maybe it is because we just love to enjoy popcorn during an exciting movie, and the movie industry just knew and has always known how to target us. Another reason is that the smell of buttered popcorn - whether you eat it with or without butter - is enough to get us to go and purchase it.

Perhaps the real reason though is that tradition plays an empowering force in culture and society. Even if you consider yourself to be a "non-traditional" person, you really need to look at the little aspects of life to decide if that is true or not. When you go to a theater, what compels you to buy popcorn? Chances are, at least part of your reason is tradition!