In the early 1900s, during his travels through Northern Canada, Clarence Birdseye of Montclair, New Jersey, saw the Inuit use ice, wind, and temperature to instantly freeze freshly-caught fish.

[7][8] In 1943, Unilever acquired T. J. Lipton, a majority stake in Frosted Foods (owner of the Birds Eye brand in the UK)[9] and Batchelors Peas, one of the largest vegetables canners in the United Kingdom.

[19] After the retirement of the original actor, the brand was relaunched with a younger man with designer stubble (played by Thomas Pescod), but was less popular, and the character was dropped from Birdeye's advertising.

[21] In the late 1970s and early 1980s, June Whitfield appeared in a series of television advertisements for Birds Eye products, featuring the concluding voice-over line: "... it can make a dishonest woman of you!".

The series began in 1973 and the adverts were produced by advertising agency Collett Dickenson Pearce (CDP) and directed by Alan Parker before later being taken over by Paul Weiland, the slogan being "somehow, other beefburgers just don't taste the same".

Initially, they starred Paul Malkin as Dan Godfrey and the late Darren Cockerill as his brother Ben, with the latter only ever wanting to eat beefburgers from Birds Eye.

Cockerill returned for a final farewell with MacDonald in the early 1980s and the series briefly continued with a "new" Ben and Mary (played by Jonathan Slater and Fiona Rook respectively) before CDP lost the Birds Eye contract shortly afterwards.

A popular advertisement for Birds Eye Steakhouse Grills featured a scene of hungry building site workers heading home in a minibus and singing about what they were hoping their wives would serve with their steak burgers.

In 2013, DNA tests revealed that horsemeat was present in Birds Eye chili con carne that was sold in Belgium and was produced and supplied by a Belgian group named Frigilunch.