The World's Largest Pudding Cup
Sometimes The Oompa-Loompas Are Wrong
From Inspired By True Events With Adam Rockwell
The Story Of The Giant Pudding Cup
I have a strange, foggy memory of a giant pudding cup from the dark recesses of my mind from when I was six years old.
Wait, did I just say… a pudding cup? Yes, but not just any pudding cup. A fabulously enormous pudding cup. A pudding cup that was bigger than a person.
A pudding cup that held enough pudding to fill a dump truck!
But sometimes I ask myself, is this a false memory? It seems so… ridiculous. Have I simply been dreaming up a giant cup of pudding my entire life because I watched too much Willie Wonka?
The Giant Pudding Cup Was REAL!
In the summer of 1981, at the Thunderbird Mall in Menomonie, WI, The World’s Largest Pudding Cup ever made was unveiled by Swiss Miss at the Dairy Festival!
My mind wasn’t playing Oompa-Loompa tricks on me. I was actually there and witnessed The World’s Largest Pudding Cup!
Menomonie and Swiss Miss
Menomonie, Wisconsin, sits on the shores of dark-green Lake Menomin in northwest Wisconsin. It’s a small town of 15,000 people. There’s a small university located there named The University of Wisconsin-Stout. Good name for a place that headquarters Swiss Miss.
Swiss Miss makes the pudding cups you buy at the grocery store if you’re feeling naughty. They also make those hot chocolate packets that I shall not besmirch but also shall not drink. That said, I love those fake little marshmallows.
Aside: Swiss Miss should have been named Miss Swiss, but nobody ever listens to me. Also, don’t get it confused with Swiss Cake Rolls.
Swiss Miss was a charitable company that donated pudding cups to just about every nonprofit and event in our town.
Lots of dads and moms we knew worked at Swiss Miss. Their fridges were FULL of pudding cups. Even our “Scout Master” worked there and I don’t remember a single Cub Scout meeting where we didn’t get a free cup of Swiss Miss pudding.
Listen, I don’t know and I don’t care if my fellow Menomonites were stealing pudding off the truck, getting cases of expired pudding, or it was gifted to them by their generous pudding employer.
The only thing I do know is that I got lots of free pudding from neighbors, civic groups, and even the bank. Menomonie truly was just like Charlie And The Chocolate Factory. Okay, not chocolate per se, more Charlie And The Chocolate-like Substance Factory.
But I digest…
One of the best things about Menomonie, Wisconsin, besides all the free pudding? It often smelled of chocolate. This was especially true when Lake Menomin was frozen. Otherwise, the town often smells like blue-green algae.
The World’s Largest Pudding Cup
On a sunny weekend day in June of 1981, my father Norm Rockwell heard about The World’s Largest Pudding Cup. We lived right up the road from the Thunderbird Mall where the Dairy Festival was taking place that June… and that’s where the giant cup of pudding was to be displayed.
June is dairy month, after all.
We piled into the little Plymouth Horizon and drove the eight blocks to the Thunderbird Mall. That’s right, we didn’t even walk. We KNEW we were going to be eating free pudding. You don’t go on a walk after pudding.
After crossing Broadway, we saw what we didn’t expect: Over 2,000 people crowding the smallish parking lot to see this Guinness Book Of World Records Pudding Cup.
We walked into the crowd and there, gleaming in the distance, was The World’s Largest Pudding Cup.
It was real.
It was spectacular.
It was a replica of a regular four-ounce sized pudding that was GINORMOUS. It looked EXACTLY like a regularly-sized pudding cup.
I imagined myself jumping into the pudding and eating it like we WERE in Willy Wonka. According to The Dunn County News, there were 5,000 pounds of pudding in the container.
This is where The World’s Largest Pudding Cup gets a little… weird. It wasn’t quite what I had expected.
We stood in line… to see the pudding. There were stairs built to a platform. The top of the cup had a piece of clear plastic so you could properly view the chocolate pudding.
I was expecting that they’d be up there ladling out the pudding into big bowls. But alas, that was not how they were running the world’s largest pudding cup operation.
Apparently, the health department had determined that this would be “unsanitary.”
After we stared at the pudding through the glass for a minute (total excitement), we were ushered to the other side of the platform, down the stairs, and handed a single cup of pudding and a plastic spoon to eat it with.
Sure enough.
Free pudding.
But not from the world’s largest pudding.
We sat at a picnic table in the hot sun of the Thunderbird Mall parking lot and ate the standard size cup of pudding. Sad. Before the Dairy Festival Festivities really got going, my father got us back in the car and we drove the eight blocks home.
After we left, they apparently broke into the giant pudding and had a pudding eating contest. I missed the contest, because I was only six, and Marvin Blodgett won it. Apparently he ate 56 ounces of pudding from The World’s Largest Pudding.
Marvin Blodgett was one lucky guy.
I don’t know if The Guinness Book of World Records has a “World’s Biggest Pudding Cup” category, but I’m guessing they don’t, because why would they?
There’s a Ripley’s Believe It Or Not Museum in my current city of Newport, Oregon. It would probably be more appropriate to house the container in THAT museum.
Re-creation Of The World’s Biggest Pudding Cup
After scouring the internet, I was not able to find a picture of The World’s Largest Pudding from the side, so I had to make a re-creation of the actual event so you can truly understand the grandeur of “The World’s Largest Pudding”!
Please understand, the Chobani Yogurt is meant to represent the Swiss Miss pudding. I didn’t have any pudding at home.
Thank you to Sofi Doane of the Menomonie Historical Society who provided me with the archival photos from the Dunn County News!!
"...but I digest." :) :) :)
Hahah love the mock-up 🙏 Very much appreciated ❤️