331. Just Add Ice and Milk! JUDY’S HALO-HALO IN CANS, 1963

JUDY'S HALO-HALO, print ad 1963

 Now here’s a product innovation that’s theoretically brilliant—a canned halo-halo! Imagine, your favorite refreshing Filipino dessert, yours to enjoy straight from the can—just add shaved ice and milk!  JUDY’S HALO-HALO, which came out in the early 1960s, packed a halo-halo mix of sweet beans, preserved kamote, banana, langka bits and sakobi (tapioca pearls) in a tin can. By adding shaved ice, evaporated milk, and a scoop of leche flan or ube haleya, you can easily make your own halo-halo creation. But the idea, however clever, did not take off. It’s probably because halo-halo was readily available in any neighborhood, and can be made using fresher, more natural ingredients—no preservatives needed.  At a cheaper price too, since in those days, you had the option of bringing your own glass. JUDY’S HALO-HALO even had the budget to advertise in national weekly magazine, using strip ads, but no amount of marketing push could help the product.  You could say that the reception to JUDY’s HALO-HALO was cold, its sale, well, frozen.