His Colorful, Liquid Treat Still Keeps Kids Smiling; Create Your Market: Inventor Edwin Perkins' determination and drive helped him turn Kool-Aid into a household name.(LEADERS & SUCCESS)(BEST OF LEADERS & SUCCESS)

Byline: SONJA CARBERRY

Edward Perkins was smitten.

The youngster had just tasted a newfangled dessert called Jell-O and knew it was going to be a hit. Now he wanted to create something just as good that would give others the same thrill he'd experienced.

Perkins (1888-1961) would invent more than 100 food products before producing one of the biggest-selling treats in America -- Kool-Aid, or as he called it when he devised it in the mid-1920s, Fruit Smack.

Seven decades later, that summertime sensation endures as a rite of childhood. Today, 17 gallons of Kool-Aid is consumed every second during the summer.

From an early age, Perkins wanted to sell a product for an honest dollar.

While minding his father's general store in Hendley, Neb., young Perkins saw a newspaper ad, "How to Become a Manufacturer," and sent in his money for the information. He studied it and started experimenting in his mother's kitchen.