My recollection was that colored margarine was banned. You could still buy pale margarine that didn't look like butter, and you could even get packs of coloring that you'd have to mix it in yourself. Nobody in Wisconsin wanted that hassle, so we'd just smuggle in normal colored margarine from Illinois if we wanted some. Of course real butter did taste better than margarine; it was just much more expensive as a result of the protection from competition that the state government gave to dairy farmers.
My father tells exactly this same story.
Haha! I think this is funny. In the 1950’s when margarine became popular, there was such a law also in Minnesota. It was supposed to protect the dairy market.
We would have to squeeze the yellow dye bubble and then play with the bag of margarine to get the color equally dispersed in the margarine. But I think that silly law expired about 40 years ago
There was a store in Illinois, along 41 just south of the border, that had an enormous white neon sign reading “OLEOMARGARINE” for the benefit of travelers from Wisconsin. An old friend said you could see it for miles...I believe it may have once been the world’s largest freestanding neon sign.