Why Is the Vlasic Pickles Mascot a Stork?

Birds and pickles go together like peanut butter and jelly—wait, what? Odd as it may seem, Vlasic Pickles felt that was the case and chose a stork to represent their brand in 1974. Some 50 years later, the ubiquitous mascot doesn’t seem so weird anymore. But what prompted Vlasic to choose a stork in the first place?

1. A Brief History of Vlasic Pickles
2. Bye-Bye Babies: Hello Pickles

A Brief History of Vlasic Pickles

First, a little background: a Bosnian Croat man by the name of Frank Vlasic immigrated to the United States in 1912 to try to create a better life for his family. Taking a factory job and settling down in Detroit, Frank scrimped and saved until he had enough money to start his own creamery. He eventually turned it over to his son Joe, who expanded the business to include pickles.

During the economic boom after World War II, the Vlasics could hardly keep up with the sizable pickle demand. Although they still sold cheese products, the real moneymaker was the innovative idea to sell their Polish pickles in glass jars.

The Vlasic family certainly didn’t invent pickles—people have been noshing on pickled cucumbers for several thousand years. But Vlasic did manage to become one of the most prominent and most popular pickle companies in the U.S.

Bye-Bye Babies: Hello Pickles

What does all of this have to do with a stork? According to the Vlasic website, the spokesbird was chosen in 1974 to represent the brand because babies were in short supply, so the company decided to offer the stork some work delivering pickles instead. The national birthrate was dropping around this time, and Vlasic took this opportunity to capitalize on the trend.

Taking the classic stork mythology and combining it with the belief that pregnant women crave pickles, they created one killer marketing campaign. The company had a history of cheekily leaned into the whole pregnancy craving trope: As the New York Times reported on January 13, 1974, one maternity wear company even made shirts showing two characters—a pregnant woman and her husband—that had featured in popular Vlasic commercials. “We decided that pickles are a fun food. We decided we didn’t want to take ourselves or our business too seriously,” Robert Vlasic, then the company’s chairman, told the Times.

And though national birthrates have fluctuated throughout the decades, the stork—whose name is Jovny—has remained a brand staple. Today’s stork speaks like comedian Groucho Marx and is frequently pictured holding a pickle like a cigar.

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A version of this story originally ran in 2015; it has been updated for 2025.