Stephen Kaufman of Green Bay, WI, a food scientist, and Jim McGuire, a research and development technician, came up with the invention while working for General Mills in the late 1980s, after Kaufman was browsing through a women's magazine and seeing shampoo samples inserts. The original idea was based on frozen ice pops. Kaufman told the Minneapolis–Saint Paul magazine "City Pages" that the original conception was for the yogurt to be firm, so the tube would stand straight up — like an ice pop — but when that didn't work out, they shifted toward a creamy yogurt.