Jif is an American brand of peanut butter made by The J.M. Smucker Company, which purchased the brand from Procter & Gamble in 2001.

Jif arrived on the scene after Skippy and Peter Pan, its two main competitors, which still exist to this day. Jif’s history actually begins with a small-time peanut butter maker being acquired by a much larger corporation. In 1955, after Procter & Gamble purchased a peanut butter brand called Big Top from a Kentucky company, they revamped the brand by adding sugar and molasses, included oils other than peanut oil in the recipe, and branded the new concoction Jif.

The original Creamy and Crunchy style Jif peanut butter both debuted in 1958. In 1974, Extra Crunchy Jif was introduced, followed in 1991 by Simply Jif, a peanut butter variant with low sodium and less sugar than regular Jif. Reduced-Fat Jif was introduced three years later in 1994. In 2014, Jif Whips was released as the first whipped peanut butter. Since 1981, Jif has been the leading peanut butter brand in the United States.

As with many well-known American brands, JIF has engaged in a number of successful marketing campaigns that have helped cement their status on grocery store shelves. A blue Kangaroo named Jifaroo was used as the mascot when the brand was introduced in 1958, but the marsupial disappeared from advertising in the 1960s. Jif’s ad campaign “Choosy mothers choose Jif” helped make Jif the best-selling peanut butter in the country, a position that it has held consistently since 1981.

Today, Jif also offers peanut butter made with honey instead of sugar, peanut butter with no sugar at all, and even peanut butter with Omega 3 fatty acids in the form of fish oil.

According to Statista; en.wikipedia and mashed.com