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Häagen-Dazs is an American brand of ice cream, established by Reuben Mattus in The Bronx, New York.
The ice cream comes in many different flavors and is a so-called "premium" brand, meaning it is quite dense (very little air is mixed in during manufacture), and has a high butterfat content. It is sold both in grocery stores and in dedicated retail outlets serving ice cream cones, sundaes, and so on. The product is very popular.
Contrary to common belief, the name is not European; it is simply two made-up words meant to look European to American eyes. This is known in the marketing industry as foreign branding (see also Heavy metal umlaut). Mattus included an outline of Denmark on early labels to reinforce the Scandinavian theme. (Ironically, although Häagen-Dazs operates in 54 countries around the world, none of the company's 700 stores is in any Scandinavian country). Mattus was, however, a European immigrant to the US, originally coming from Poland.
The playful spelling devices in the name invoke the spelling systems used in several European countries. "ä" (an Umlaut) is used in the spelling of German, Finnish and Swedish languages (spelling, roughly, the vowels of "bet" and "cat", respectively), doubled vowel letters spell long vowels in Finnish, Dutch, and occasionally German; and zs spells the "zh" sound /ʒ/ (as in vision) in Hungarian. None of these spelling conventions is used in pronouncing the name of the American product, which has "ah" as the first vowel, hard g, and a final "s" sound.
Häagen-Dazs was sold to The Pillsbury Company, now owned by General Mills, in 1983.
External link
- Häagen-Dazs official web site (http://www.haagen-dazs.com/)de:Häagen-Dazs