The Duncan Hines brand is probably as close to a universally beloved product as we get here in the States, but for most of the real life Duncan Hines's seven decades prior to the baked goods thing, no one could have anticipated that outcome. Born in 1880, he came of age in the new era of automobiles, and as a traveling salesman, he developed a habit that would make him an icon of the era: he took meticulous notes about the little roadside eateries he encountered as he traversed the nation in the first decades of the 20th century. Often, he was accompanied by one of his three wives as he eventually built a little publishing empire, and then a successful branding and licensing enterprise that has been gifting Americans with delightful baked goods for the better part of a century.

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