Researching Edwin Perkins

As a young man he worked with products like Jell-O, which was sold in his father's general store in Hendley. When Perkins came to Hastings at age 31 in 1920, his principal interests were patent medicines and household products. He began producing a line of over 125 "Onor-Maid" items which were sold door-to-door and by mail. One of the most popular was "Fruit-Smack", a fruit-flavored liquid concentrate. By 1927 he had developed a powdered soft drink mix called Kool-Aid, which he packaged in envelopes and sold in grocery stores, promising 10 glasses of beverage for 10 cents. Demand for this product was so great that it soon had international sales. Soon the Perkins Products Company focused entirely on Kool-Aid. In 1931 Perkins relocated to Chicago. By 1934 the name was changed to Kool-Aid. The company was sold to General Foods in 1953. Kool-Aid later became a household name and made Edwin Perkins a wealthy man. The Perkins family remembered its Nebraska roots, donating generously to philanthropies in Adams County and elsewhere in the state. Among local gifts were Perkins Recital Hall and Perkins Library at Hastings College and Perkins Pavilion at Good Samaritan Village.

A recreation of his father's general store, family artifacts and Kool-Aid memorabilia are housed at the Hastings Museum in Hastings, Nebraska.

Perkins was an officer in the Volunteer Force, serving in the Hampshire Regiment where he was lieutenant-colonel in command of the 2nd volunteer battalion, and held the honorary rank of colonel. He resigned his commission with the Hampshire regiment on 3 December 1902, and received the Volunteer Decoration (VD) for his service. He was also appointed a captain in the Reserve on 29 June 1887, from which he resigned on 22 November 1902.

At the 1918 general election, he unsuccessfully contested the two-seat Southampton constituency, when both seats were won by Coalition Liberals. At the 1922 general election, when the coalition government had been dissolved, Perkins and the other Conservative candidate Lord Apsley won both seats, defeating the Liberal incumbents. They held the seats until the 1929 general election, which neither Perkins nor Apsley contested.

Perkins was knighted in the Dissolution Honours on 12 July 1929, for political and public services.