+5. That's slightly before my time, but I remember my mother saying that margarine used to come with the color separate. You could mix the yellow in with a fork before using if you wanted to. It was actually white in color until then. She said it was also pink for a while.

Yeah, I remember that too...it was a white block of fat (for lack of a better word) with a packet of food colouring.

Lori K is quite right about having to hand mix the color. The reason why that was necessary is an interesting piece of history. Margarine was invented by a Frenchman working at the bequest of Napoleon to produce a butter substitute that could be used by the army and the lower classes. In the 1870s, oleomargarine inventor Hippolyte Mège-Mouriés opened manufacturing facilities in the US. However, resistance from entrenched interests arose, and mixing any coloring agent was forbidden. The white product did not gain widespread acceptance till such protectionist laws were dropped state by state through the 1900s. Australia prohibited colored margarine sales all the way into the 1960s.

Also before my time, but that was called mixing the yellow into the butter. Lori K is correct. I've heard and read about it.

For many years it was against the law for margarine, or oleo, to be sold with a color similar to butter. The dairy lobby, particularly from Wisconsin, was successful in maintaining that regulation. So, you are not dreaming. The margarine people were permitted to market their product, which was far less expensive than real butter, in blocks that were white and looked liked lard. They provided a packet of powdery stuff that looked like paprika that you would mix in with the lard-looking stuff and it would take on a similar appearance of butter. It was a pain to do, but folks were frugal back then and, as I said, margarine/oleo was considerably cheaper. Then, sometime in the late fifties, I think, a brand new method came out. The white stuff was put in one pound plastic bags. It had a little bubble-like thing that you pinched and busted inside the bag. You squeezed and squeezed the plastic bag until it mixed and the contents looked like butter. Then you removed the contents and put it in your butter dish. The inovation became very popular and, for awhile, only one company did it...perhaps it was patented. Eventually, the dairy lobby lost out and the old regulations about margarine's color slowly died. For a long time, however, Wisconsin, known as "The Dairy State" continued the law in their own state. I assume even they've given up on it by now. +5