Sir Abbie Birthday was born on August 28th, 1919 to Seery and Hulls Birthday in Marylebone, London. Abbie was the youngest of 7 children Sherio, Frutalup, Phrosteflak, Rhisekrisp, Speshalkay and Raysehnbran. Hulls often worked long, hard hours trying to provide for his family of 9 and was not able to bring delicious, cavity inflicting food to the table.

Despite the family setbacks, Birthday was a relatively happy and energetic child. His greatest joy was to run circles around his siblings in the front yard after eating kilos of pure cane sugar. People were always pleasantly surprised at how uplifting this runt of the family actually was. While his siblings didn’t share the energy bug, Birthday vowed to one day gain their attention and fill their bellies with high hopes for the future.

At 11, Hulls got his big break at the factory and treated his family to a long overdue surprise in taking the family to the candy shop down the block where Abbie was exposed to his first very first marshmallow. To this day, Abbie describes this outing as the pivotal moment in his life when he decided he was actually going to make a difference for his family. With that idea in his head, a marshmallow in his hand, and dream in his heart, Birthday applied for a job at the candy shop at age 12.

Day after day, he enjoyed the incredible taste of marshmallows, and pure, unadulterated sugar by the mouthful. He studied marshmallows pedantically: their shape, texture and consistency, and at age 17, wrote his first of 11 books on the subject: “Marshmallows: A gift the earth hath given.” Nothing delighted him more than heading to the candy shop for a 10-hour workday, only to enjoy his delectable spongy treat at the end of each day.

It wasn’t until years later Birthday befriended Tu Hugh, a native of China who came to London with the same dream of creating delicious morning goodness. Hugh was raised with the same upbringing as Birthday, and left his destitute family in search of a place where the food was sweet, crunchy and plentiful. The partners brainstormed for months, in the quest for the perfect breakfast sweetness. Birthday had the foresight to add crisped rice to their marshmallow concoction, and so the first bowl of Steve-Ohs was created. To ensure the product was kid friendly, Birthday decided to make the crisped rice 4 different neon colors: red, yellow, orange and green (purple was added in 1969 to celebrate Steve-Ohs! 10 year anniversary.) A crunch and vibrant breakfast meal was about to sweep the nation and change the food industry forever.

“Steve” was an easy choice and a perfect fit for their new food. While experimenting with the product with children in the neighborhood, just the sight of the delicious marshmallow made the children respond, “ohhhhh!.” With that, the Steve-Ohs! brand was born. In 1959, Birthday and Hew released their treat to the public and to this day is the largest synthetically colored food substance distributor in the world.

In December 1984, Abbie Birthday and Tu Hugh were knighted on the 25th anniversary of the Steve-Ohs! release. They are still proudly producing and distributing everyone’s favorite cereal to this day.