• by Thom Forbes  @tforbes, September 4, 2015

The Jolly Giant is relocating to another valley as Minneapolis-based General Mills is selling its Green Giant and Le Sueur frozen and canned veggie brands to Parsippany, N.J.-based B&G Foods for $765 million in cash. General Mills will continue to operate the Green Giant business in Europe and other markets under license from B&G. The portfolio had about $585 million in sales in fiscal year 2015.

“This opens up a completely new area of the store for us,” B&G president and CEO Robert Cantwell tells Fortune’s John Kell, pointing out that “his company has a history of reinvigorating brands that have had a long shelf life.”

Those brands include Ac’cent, B&G, Cream of Rice, Cream of Wheat, Devonsheer, Las Palmas, Mrs. Dash, New York Flatbreads, Old London, Ortega, Pirate’s Booty, Red Devil, Smart Puffs, Vermont Maid and others. 

“General Mills, Green Giant was an important brand, but they had a different direction…. It makes more sense under B&G's ownership and we're going to pay a lot more attention to it,” Cantwell says, reports Reuters’ Ramkumar Iyer. “Green Giant deserves its rightful share,” Cantwell tells Kell. 

Over the next year, it “intends to refresh the packaging and spend double what General Mills had allocated for marketing,” writes Kell, who reports that the brand is presently No. 1 in Canada and No. 2 in the U.S. B&G will be looking to expand its presence in the freezer case with more acquisitions in the future.

“The sale comes as no surprise given the shift in consumer preferences away from shopping in the middle of grocery stores, where aisles are dominated by packaged, frozen and canned food, says Jack Russo, an Edward Jones analyst who follows General Mills,” writes Hadley Malcolm for USA Today. “Even though brands like Green Giant and Le Sueur are known for selling vegetables, consumers increasingly want the fresher options in the produce aisle, he says.”

“General Mills is trying to get their portfolio more focused on health and wellness,” Russo says. “They're trying to do the best they can to reposition themselves.”

Indeed, GM says it will focus on brands and categories with “the greatest future growth opportunities,” in its statement. And it is only “one of several U.S. food giants rethinking their product lineups,” points out Bloomberg News’ Nat Turner, “as consumers shift away from frozen and canned vegetables.” 

Not that B&G isn’t itself aware of the trend. 

“For over 100 years, Green Giant and Le Sueur have been providing consumers with great tasting, nutritious vegetables picked at the peak of perfection,” CEO Cantwell says in its news release. “We look forward to building on that rich history by offering new and innovative products that will respond to the needs of today’s health conscious consumer.”

Green Giant dates back to the Minnesota Valley Canning Co., which started in 1903 in Le Sueur, Minn., Evan Ramstad and Mike Hughlett report in the Minneapolis Star Tribune. It “was an innovator in the vacuum packing of vegetables in cans in the 1920s,” they write. “It first put a giant on the label of its cans in 1928 and, not long after, gave the giant green skin.”

“But in his earliest days he was stooped and scowling, wore a scruffy bearskin and looked more like the Incredible Hulk than the grand old gardener he is today,” according to a piece in Ad Age’s special report on The Advertising Century. “Enter ad agency Erwin, Wasey & Co. The assignment for the Giant's transformation was tackled by none other than young Leo Burnett, who improved the Giant's hunched posture, turned his scary scowl into a sunny smile and clothed him in a light, leafy outfit.”

The company was subsequently renamed Green Giant Co. In 1979, it was bought by Pillsbury, which was itself acquired by General Mills in 2000. 

“Green Giant was such a fixture in popular culture in the 1950s and 1960s that the Kingsmen … had a top 10 hit in 1965 with a novelty tune about the giant’s dating woes,” write Ramstad and Hughlett. “The company initially objected to the song, according to a post on General Mills’ history blog. Later, either the company or contract distributors gave the band a plastic prop of the Green Giant to use onstage.”

As for the deal, which is expected to close by the end of the year, it remains to be seen who has the last “Ho, Ho, Ho.”