Her website, smartly evokes a sense of sugary fun that syrup brings to a pancake or waffle breakfast. The design, however, feels a little oppressive, unfinished, and haphazard. For instance, the background consists of a mountain of waffles that extends to edge of the frame, as a distracting brown splash of syrup in the center serves as the background for the text and images throughout the site.

But text is quite amusing. It turns out that Mrs. Butterworth is more than happy to share her personal stories. Her parents, by the way, had a disagreement over what to name her: Dad (Mr. Butterworth?) wanted her to be named Yvonne while Mom wanted her to be Opal. The delivery doctor, who was supposedly trying to help out, offered the name Jocelyn. In the end, the first letters of the suggested names were combined to create her first name: Joy. (This, by the way, apparently led to her being called Joy Buzzerworth as a kid. Poor dear.) A nice human, and humorous, touch to the content.

The site continues the sense of frivolity with “For Fun” and “Contests” buttons. In “For Fun,” there are interactive puzzles of the product and its logo. There is also a coloring page that users can build themselves. The use of technology (however simple) is a pleasant surprise since the rest of the site is extremely low-tech.

The “Contests” area asks visitors to take their Mrs. Butterworth bottles on the road and submit pictures of her from around the world. Unfortunately, no images of Mrs. Butterworth at Cannes or Carnival or the Super Bowl were up yet, but one hopes that soon an image will be coming from Madagascar or Tunisia or Antarctica.

There are three versions of Mrs. Butterworth (Regular, Lite, and Sugar Free) as well as a few pancake mixes as site visitors learn in the “Products” section. But the joy of Mrs. Butterworth, obviously, is the bottle shape that was a genius marketing move when it was created all those years ago. And don’t forget that she was the original talking bottle of syrup, beating Quaker Oats’ Aunt Jemima by at least five years.

And though she’s been around or a while, Mrs. Butterworth apparently sees herself today as a “confident and successful businesswoman,” according to her website. That may be true, but she’s certainly not throwing away that apron.