It makes products for John Deere, Microsoft, Universal Studios and the medical industry. Can your cheese do that?

Foamation Incorporated, nestled on the cusp of Milwaukee and St. Francis, produces the internationally-recognized Cheeseheads, the hats you've seen during NFL games on television, including the Packers' trips to the Super Bowl, as well as on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno."

You either like them or abhor them. Or maybe you just think they look better on somebody else. They are large and soft to the touch; a bit like a cheddar cheese version of Al Roker.

The company began cutting the cheese in 1987 and Denise Kominski, a manager at Foamation, says the company was truly founded from simple beginnings.

"Company owner and Cheesehead creator Ralph Bruno, was going to a Brewers game," Kominski says. "He took a piece of foam from his mother's couch, which was being restored, and he cut it into a shape of a cheese wedge, spray-painted it, and plopped it on his head. The rest is history."

The hats caught the attention of a lot of people and Foamation hit its heyday during the Packers' mid-'90s Super Bowl trips.

"It's a very cyclical business," Kominski explains. "It seems to have its period of popularity, followed by a down time, and now it's on the rise again. I think this year will be one of the big ones with the renovation work being done on Lambeau field. It's a very positive hat, you have fun with it."

During those Super Bowl years, Foamation coordinated a caravan with semis loaded with Cheeseheads and trekked to New Orleans and San Diego.

"They couldn't keep up with the demand," Kaminski says. "They couldn't keep the hats in stock anywhere."

The Cheesehead started it all, but the company wants you to know it also offers the foam cowboy hat, the foamy baseball hat and a foam fez.

"Any kind of hat you can think of, we incorporate it into cheese," Kaminski says proudly. "Because cheese is Wisconsin."

The appeal of Foamation products was big enough to move beyond faux dairy foam, too.

"The national peanut board was at the All Star Game," Kaminski says. "We did the peanut hats for them and the peanut truck goes all around the country."

And Wisconsin isn't the only state to embrace an image immortalized in foam.

"What cheese is to Wisconsin, ravioli is to St. Louis," Kaminski says, noting that the company makes a foam version of the stuffed pasta delicacy for fans.

Perhaps the most intriguing, if not amusing, Cheesehead anecdote, stems from the news that a Cheesehead was credited with preventing a fatality.

"The pilot of a small airplane was going down," Kaminski says. "Before he hit the ground, he put the Cheesehead in front of his face. He went on 'The Tonight Show with Jay Leno' and credited the Cheesehead with saving his life."

You can purchase cheesy products at various outlets in Wisconsin, including ties, kitchen magnets and cheesy footballs. The big Cheesehead sells for about $20 in stores

The sky is the limit in terms of what can be produced. It just takes a bit of imagination and a mold to cast the image. Go ahead, let yourself go. As they like to say at Foamation, "Think Outside the Triangle."