Culture

Food History

Vintage Boxed Cake Mixes That You Never See Anymore By Jay Wilson Aug. 8, 2025 7:19 am EST

Dmp/Getty Images

At this point, boxed cake mix has been around longer than pretty much everyone on the planet, and it continues to delight to this day. Boxed cake mixes were first invented during the Great Depression by John D. Duff, and like many things born during that troubled time, it came out of a need to scrimp and avoid unnecessary waste. Duff, who operated a molasses company, stumbled across the idea of drying molasses that would otherwise be wasted and putting it into a preformed mix. An American classic was born, and over the years, boxed cake mixes got more and more ambitious, with plenty of flavors and styles cropping up and fizzling out.

Sadly, though,

See Full Page