Hot Coca Cola
I saw this 1907 ad and all I could think was YUCK. Hot Coca Cola? There is nothing worse than that can of soda you forgot about, that sat on the counter all afternoon, and now its warm and flat and when you take a sip you sort of gag and pour the rest down the sink. And what else could “hot Coca Cola” taste like?
Well, dear reader, I am not afraid to take serious gustatory risks for your edification, so I tried it. But before I give you the hot Coke low down, maybe you’re wondering what I was wondering: why on earth would anyone even think of HOT Coke, for pete’s sake?
Soda fountains were hugely popular back at the turn of the century. Maybe you’ve seen an “old fashioned ice cream parlour” in a beach town or tourist destination. When I was a kid we had Farrell’s Ice Cream Parlor: black and white tile floors, ceiling fans, Victorian stained glass, cane back chairs, and about 200 kinds of ice cream and syrup concoctions. The soda fountains of 1900 were similar: cold soda drinks and ice cream novelties, served in a sit-down parlor. Ice cream and candy usually went together. In fact, the word “confectionery” was used to refer both to ice cream and candy! Basically, sweet stuff. Besides the sugar link, ice cream and candy would be combined for another practical reason: ice cream and soda were cold, and popular in the warm seasons. And candy, especially anything with chocolate, was strictly for the cooler months. No air conditioning, remember? So if you sold soda and candy, you could keep your business afloat year round.
And then someone came up with a solution to the seasonal limits on the soda fountain: hot soda. Why not offer hot drinks for the cold season, and keep the soda customers coming all year long? The idea was to use what was on hand, but make it hot. Hot chocolate was the obvious choice to anchor the menu. Then you had a lot of possibilities for hot liquid offerings (well, not all of these would be such a hit today: beef tea (boullion), beef and celery (beef tea with celery salt), beef and tomato (with ketchup), lactated beef or cream boviline (add sweet cream to beef tea, yikes!), hot lemon, hot ginger (ginger ale), hot ginger puff (add cream and whip cream), clam bullion, tomato bullion, chicken broth, oyster broth
Hot Coca Cola doesn’t seem so odd in the company of hot lemon and hot ginger and cream boviline. So was it any good?
The report from the Candy Professor test kitchen: Actually, hot Coca Cola is a nice hot drink! The candy kid nailed it: “It tastes the same, except it is hot.” The trick to enjoying it is that you have to stop anticipating the experience of cold soda. The bubbles boil out quickly as soon as you heat it, so it is not fizzy like cold soda. Imagine Celestial Seasons “Mandarin Orage Spice” with more cherry and plum, and then add about a cup of sugar, and that’s about how it tastes. Too sweet for me, but I don’t add sugar to my coffee or tea either.
Sources: “The Hot Soda Season,” Confectioners Journal Jan. 1908, p 102; “Making and Dispensing Hot Soda” Confectioners Journal Jan. 1909, p. 80.
2 comments February 8, 2010
Tough Tootsie, and How It Got To Be That Way
Durable. Rugged. Stands the test of time. That’s what you expect from radial tires. Not so much from candy.
But that’s the Tootsie Roll. Built to last. Tootsie Roll Industries describes the candy’s peculiar durability as “its non-perishable quality and resistance to extreme weather conditions.” I’ll say. It’s pretty amazing that a candy renowned for surviving under war conditions should end up near the top of America’s favorite treats.
How, you might wonder, did the Tootsie Roll get to be that way? Because if it weren’t for that non-perishable resistance, Tootsie Roll would have been just like any other chewy American candy of the early 1900s.
The secret is in the patent. U.S. Patent number 903,088, awarded to Leo Hirschfeld on November 3, 1908 with the unassuming name “A process for making candy.”
Normally a candy like taffy would be made by boiling the sugar mixture to a certain temperature, then pulling it on forks as it cooled, which would incorporate tiny air bubbles, making it lighter in color and creating that chewy texture. Once it had cooled, you could cut it into pieces and wrap it.
What Leo figured out was that if you baked the candy at a low heat for a couple of hours after you pulled it but before you shaped it, the texture would be transformed from regular sticky taffy to the particular and peculiar texture of Tootsie Roll. The second cooking would cause the candy to rise like a cake, and become more light and porous. And it would make the candy a little tough, Leo admitted: “while tough in a measure it is not unpleasantly so, and will after a reasonable length of time thoroughly dissolve in the mouth.” That sounds about right.
Beecause Hirschfeld patented this process, no one else could do it. The patent was a very big deal in 1909. Tootsie manufacturer Stern & Saalberg Co. made sure everybody knew they had sole legal right to the Tootsie Roll process, and that they would prosecute anyone who tried to steal it. If you didn’t know, you could read it plainly at the bottom of their first known ad (shown here), which appeared in Confectioners Journal in May 1909:
The process for making Chocolate Tootsie Rolls is Patented. We have $50,000 laid aside to protect our rights.
The name “Tootsie” was also a registered trade-mark, protected by U.S. Patent and Trademark law. And in case you forgot, the patent was right there on the label of every single Tootsie Roll. The print is a little fuzzy, but it says “Tootsie Reg. U.S. Pat. Office” all over the label.
Detail of wrapper from early Tootsie Roll ads (1909-1912)
There is no candy like a Tootsie Roll, then or now. Pretty smart, that Leo Hirschfeld.
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3 comments February 5, 2010
Tootsie Roll Tragedy: The Real Leo Hirschfeld Story
It’s 1909, and The Stern & Saalberg Company has a candy hit. Americans just can’t get enough of their “Chocolate Tootsie Rolls.” Those Tootsie Rolls have gotten so popular that they have to take out ads in the trade papers cautioning their customers against accepting inferior imitation. But who is this “Stern & Saalberg” who is taking all the credit for Chocolate Tootsie Rolls? Where is Leo Hirschfeld?
As candy nostalgists know, Leo Hirschfeld is the official hero of the Tootsie Roll saga. Today, Tootsie Roll is one of the top candy sellers in the U.S. And it all started with Leo, a poor Austrian immigrant with a dream and some family candy recipes. According to the Tootsie Roll Industries company history, Hirschfeld began selling the chewy candies in his little shop in New York City in 1896. The next thing you know, it’s 1917, Tootsie Rolls are a huge commercial hit, and the company changes its name to “The Sweets Company of America.” From that point out, the Tootsie empire grows in leaps and bounds. The story of Tootsie Roll after 1917 is one of a big candy company getting bigger.
There doesn’t seem to be anybody named Stern or Saalberg in official Tootsie Roll history. So what was happening in that murky gap between 1896 and 1917? And what happened to Leo Hirschfeld?
Let’s follow Leo along as he leaves his native Austria and struggles to make it in America. When Leo got off the steamship Neckar in the New York Harbor in 1884, he had two things: big dreams, and empty pockets. His father’s trade was candy, so that’s what he knew. He got to work. He set up shop in Brooklyn, sold some candy to the neighborhood kids. So far, so good.
But here’s where things get a little complicated. The common version of the story (here or here) is that Hirschfeld came up with the candy that would become Tootsie Rolls in 1896, made and wrapped them by hand, and sold them in his Brooklyn shop. A year later, seeing their popularity, he “merged” with Stern & Saalberg.
A nice story, right? But I uncovered evidence that blasts some serious holes in the official line on Tootsie Rolls.
3 comments February 3, 2010
Chocolate? Tootsie Rolls
In honor of Katharine Weber, True Confections, and her brilliant “Little Sammies” candies, I am dedicating this week to Tootsie Rolls.
Who really likes Tootsie Rolls, any way? Not quite chocolate, not quite caramel, not quite taffy. I remember getting lots of Tootsie Rolls in my Halloween bucket, and wishing for less. Now that I buy Halloween candy to give away, I know why: it’s cheap. It’s chocolate-ish, but without the expense of actual chocolate.
Actually, its this not-quite-chocolate that goes a long way toward explaining the endurance of Tootsie Roll in the candy universe. Before air conditioning and refrigeration, selling candy in the summer months was a tricky proposition. Chocolate, of course, was out. Summer candies were your taffies and your marshmallows, things that could bear some heat and humidity and not suffer too much. The genius of Tootsie Roll was to create a summer candy that was a flavor never before seen in summer candies, the flavor of chocolate.
This ad to the retail trade from 1910 promises “They melt in the mouth… But NEVER in the case.” Reminds me of another slogan about melting in the mouth… But the point here is that, because they are individually wrapped, they won’t stick together. And because they are what they are, they won’t collapse in a puddle if you ship them in July.
Notice that in 1910 they were called “Chocolate Tootsie Rolls.” Granted, Tootsie Roll’s idea of chocolate is a pretty vague one. Harvey Wiley, who became famous as a pure food crusader, analysed the contents of Tootsie Rolls for Good Housekeeping Magazine. Here’s what he had to say:
Chocolate Tootsie Rolls: About 40 per cent, glucose and 48 per cent, of sugar. Not enough chocolate to give a characteristic flavor or to warrant name.
I’m with Wiley on the chocolate flavor problem. Notice they dropped the “Chocolate” in the name of the candy, so now it’s just “Tootsie Roll.” But they were still using the word “chocolate” on the wrapper in the 1940s and 1950s. If you eat one of these with your eyes closed, and you don’t know what it is, I doubt “chocolate” will come to mind. As far as I’m concerned, the chocolaty flavor of Tootsie Rolls is mostly the power of suggestion.
It’s pretty amazing to think that the Tootsie Roll has been around for one hundred years at least. When you eat one today, you are eating the same candy your great-grandmother might have pulled from her sticky pocket. The Tootsie Roll story is a classic tale of an immigrant with an idea and a dream. Here’s the official company history from the Tootsie Industries web site:
The Tootsie Roll story began in 1896, when Austrian-born Leo Hirshfield opened a tiny candy shop in New York City. Taking full advantage of his confectioner’s background, Hirshfield hand-crafted a variety of products, including an individually wrapped, oblong, chewy, chocolate candy that quickly became a customer favorite. Sold at a penny apiece and affectionately named after Hirshfield’s five-year old daughter, Clara, whose nickname was “Tootsie,” Tootsie Rolls propelled Hirshfield’s modest corner store into burgeoning candy enterprise that has evolved in little more than a century into the multinational corporation, Tootsie Roll Industries.
But wait just a second. That 1910 ad we were looking at, it doesn’t say anything about Leo Hirshfield. The company advertising “Chocolate Tootsie Rolls” is called Stern & Saalberg. So were there two companies making Tootsie Rolls in the early 1900s? Is this a Tootsie Roll impostor, a chewy chocolaty thief? Where is Leo Hirshfield?
A fudgey mystery is afoot… Stay tuned!
Check out my review of True Confections for more on Katharine Weber’s candy fancies.
5 comments February 1, 2010
Where the Streets are Paved with Sugar
You may be aware that we have a serious infrastructure problem in this country. We’ve got collapsing bridges, rusting water mains, and exploding man holes. Worst of all if you just bought a new car, we’ve got potholes. Big ones. Here in New York City, you’ve got to watch your small pets and children, lest they tumble in never to be seen.
As in all difficulties, we turn to candy when the chips are down. Here’s one idea. It’s not new, but I think it might work.
It was 1909, in Newton, Massachusetts. That’s just outside Boston, so you know there’s a lot of brain power to draw on. The roads were in bad shape, and coal tar was getting expensive. The city elders put their heads together. What else could they use to pave the streets of Newton? Maybe they had some sticky taffy at that meeting, and maybe an alderman looked at the taffy, and looked at the coal tar, and a lighbulb went off. Why not use the stickyness of sugar instead of the stickyness of coal tar to hold the road together?
So the took some of the waste syrup from the sugar refineries, and they mixed it up with pulverized stone, and they paved a road with it. And some deemed it a success, cheaper and better than coal tar!
Of course, it’s pretty cold up there in Massachusetts for part of the year. Now when it warmed up, that’s when things might get interesting.
Possibly we may eventually witness, when hot weather again comes around, the hopeless struggles of automobile parties firmly glued to this molasses highway, like unwary flies upon sheets of “catch ‘em alive” paper. This will be diverting to the outsiders.
Not to mention the mothers, who will have to start saying, “Jonny, take that road out of your mouth right now! It’s going to spoil your dinner!”
Source: “A Molasses Road,” Confectioners Journal, Jan. 1909, p. 71.
2 comments January 29, 2010
True Confections, by Katharine Weber
Laid up with a nasty head cold, I’ve been enjoying some me-time Candy Professor style, with a sack full of taffy from the Savannah Candy Kitchen and Katherine Weber’s latest novel, True Confections (2010, Shaye Aereheart Books).
This novel is a fun splurge, sort of CandyFreak meets An Arsonists Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England. Alice Tatnall Ziplinsky, admittedly unreliable narrator, seeks absolution for her role, if any, in the series of accidents, disputes, and disasters that seem to trail after her. Alice marries into the Ziplinsky candy family at the story’s outset, and the novel follows her rise from the factory floor to the helm of the company. She’s no Ziplinsky, as her resentful mother-in-law never ceases to remind her, but she claims she is the only one in the family who truly loves and understands the candy business.
Whether Alice is the rightful possessor of the Ziplinsky fortune is one of the puzzles of the novel, which offers many mysteries and intriques along the way and kept me turning the pages. But for the candy crowd, the fun of the novel is really in the background and setting. Zip’s Candy is one of the great American candy makers, founded in 1924 by hard-scrabble immigrant Eli Czaplinsky. Weber has really done her candy history homework for this novel. Along the way, we hear about the family squabbles at Mars, the business canny of Milton Hershey, the rise of the candy bar in the 1930s, the mechanics of candy manufacture, the politics of cacao and sugar, and the transformations in the American candy business as smaller factories were bought up and consolidated into larger companies.
Zip’s Candy has been making the same candy since 1924. Alice has a lot to answer for, but she’s doing her best to bring new direction to the staid and static Zip’s Candy line. Zip’s Candy even has a website, where you can read about the history of the company and order Mumbo Jumbos, Tiger Melts, and Little Sammies (although they all seem to be unavailable at present). Weber is mercifully restrained in her recourse to hi-tech gadgetry and computer-mediated plot device, but the story is unmistakably one of our time. In Weber’s candy world as in ours, the candy blogs can make or break a new confection. All the candy bloggers will chuckle knowingly as Alice’s brilliant new product launch unravels in a fiasco that takes “white chocolate” to its logical but unfortunate conclusion.
And the website: a real find for candy nostalgists. Part of Alice Tatnall Ziplinsky’s new marketing push, one presumes. The highlight of the site is definitly the video clip of Frieda Ziplinsky’s 1958 television commercial for Little Sammies, complete with the “Say, Dat’s Tasty!” jingle. If you like the jingle, record your own version and send it in, there’s a contest!
Although Alice is faithful to her Ziplinsky marriage, she does commit “therapist adultery.” And she admits to making appointments with three different dentists in rotation; each time she goes for a cleaning she is praised for her extraordinary dental hygiene. Things are not, dear reader, entirely as they seem. But whether it is real, or true, doesn’t matter in the end. What matters is that it tastes good. And it does: there’s a bit of candy on every page of this fun novel.
Jincy Willet, “A Passion for Candy,” New York Times Book Review, Jan 14, 2010
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Add comment January 27, 2010
Kids, Candy, and the Law
Penny candy has been on my mind lately. Penny candy is of course kid’s candy. I have a fantasy that back in the olden days, kids could just go buy whatever candy they wanted, whenever they wanted. Pennies aren’t so hard to come by, after all (look under the pillows of your couch).
But it turns out that not every one agreed that children should be free to spend their pennies as they chose. In 1909, a Brooklyn alderman came to the city council with a plan: to make it a crime to buy candy. That’s right: he wanted to make it illegal for any child under the age of 16 to purchase candy, unless they were with their parents or some responsible relative. And he meant business: the law would include fines from $10 to $50 (a week’s wages for many) and from 10 to sixty days imprisonment. Luckily for the kids of Brooklyn, the ordinance got shot down.
The full force of the law seems a pretty big stick to keep kids away from their candies.
And if some though it should be a crime for kids to buy candies for themselves, others were willing to go further. How about the citizen who wrote to the New York papers with this suggestion: make it illegal for any one over the age of 14 to offer or give candy to anyone under 14. The reason they gave? To cut down on kidnapping. Uh huh. Because the kidnappers are going to think twice if they realize that the candy lure they are using is against the law…
About those stick candies in the image: those are the original version of the kind of “old fashioned stick candies” you see today every once in a while. They were about 2 1/2 inches long, wrapped in wax paper with a paper label that stated the flavor. They sold for a penny a piece at the shop; this ad is selling to the retalier, a box of 450 sticks at $2.25. Some of the flavors in this box are pretty familiar: lemon, peppermint, spearmint. But there is also sassafrass, clove, and rose. Sassafrass is similar to root beer, and clove is a flavor you might find these days in spice drops or Necco wafers, but I don’t know any rose flavored candies!
Source: Confectioners Journal Feb 1909 p. 74: “A Weird Story from Brooklyn”; Confectioners Journal May 1914 p. 102 (no title).
Add comment January 25, 2010
Fresher in Cellophane
Oooh...that candy looks good!
This 1958 Du Pont ad declares: “Candy’s at its best in Cellophane!”
And it was no exaggeration. From the 1930s through the 1960s, Cellophane was the very best wrapping material for candy. Cellophane was transparent and impermeable. This made it the ideal wrapping material for Americans who were worried about germs but who were also very picky shoppers. Cellophane meant they could see what they were getting, but still be confident that “germs” were kept out.
From the very beginning, candy makers loved cellophane. Some industry observers dated the birth of the modern candy trade to 1923, the year Du Pont began manufacturing Cellophane in the U.S. Cellophane revolutionized the packaging of candies. Individually wrapped candies sparkled, like glowing gems, a huge leap from the old dull waxed papers. Cellophane could be make into transparent bags for bulk candies, the whole package a tantalizing window on the candy inside. For the high-end market, cellophane covered and sealed fancy boxed candies, guaranteeing hygienic freshness. The candy buying consumers certainly found these qualities appealing. But Cellophane also helped the candy seller. Candy wrapped in Cellophane would maintain its freshness and visual appeal for longer periods, so merchants worried less about old goods. And wrapped candies could be sold as a “self-service” item to be stocked on modern grocery store shelves, which would mean fewer expensive clerks to serve the customers.
1936: “Delicious hard candy, Can NOW be kept handy!”
“New, clean wrap is a sweet idea!”
Ads from the 1930s emphasized cleanliness and convenience. The individually wrapped candies in these ads will be happy in a pocket or handbag, with no worry for sticky messes. The girl peering over the candy bin seems ready to reach in for a handfull. There is no clerk standing over her waiting for her order. She can just help herself! Compare this image of the open candy bins to the image of a 1900s candy store in Ye Olde Candy Shoppe.
1937: “Each piece always clean, never sticky, easy to carry!”
Many of these ads feature sweet little girls. But of course: little girls are made of “sugar and spice and everything nice,” and what is nicer or sweeter than fresh candy!
Here’s adorable Shirley Temple pouring out a candy dish in a 1954 ad.
In the 1950s ads, Du Pont emphasized the official line of the NCA, “Candy is Delicious Quick-Energy Food.” The advantage of Cellophane is to keep the candy fresh. In this and the ad at the top of the page, the candy is wrapped in Cellophane bag. Compare this to the 1930s ads, which suggest the little girls might be choosing individual pieces of candy. By the 1950s, the children’s candy market had moved away from little penny candies (see Langston Hughes Sings the Blues for Penny Candy).
1955: “You can be sure candy is fresh and clean–and you can see to choose the kind you like best–when you buy CANDY IN CELLOPHANE.”
Is the “you” who buys the candy the mother? She’s probably the one who cares that the candy is fresh and clean. Or is it the kids? They can choose the kind they like best. The jelly beans they are holding are pre-packaged in the Cellophane bag. It’s a pretty big sack, not likely to be purchased by a child alone. Candy here is something mother buys for her children, not something they go out to buy for themselves.
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1 comment January 22, 2010
Langston Hughes Sings the Blues for Penny Candy
If you were a kid in the 1930s, you knew a lot about penny candy. It was what kids could afford, their biggest indulgence, their own consumer paradise. They were cheap, colorful, varied, and sold directly to children at the little candy stores. Familiar candies like marshmallows, licorice, hard candies, suckers, caramels and the like were sold at so many per penny. Like most candy before the rise of the “self-service” supermarket in the late 1940s, penny candies were dispensed from bins or boxes by the clerk, and they were usually not wrapped or branded. The rise of wrapping technologies and materials, especially after the first world war, as well as the new importance of advertising in the 1920s, began to shift some of the children’s market to wrapped goods and bars costing 5 or 10 cents. But penny candies continued to be the major kiddie attraction. Penny candies were a big part of childhood in those days:
They would keep a child wondering and looking for a long time before spending his small change. There used to be bright red cinnamon drops at a cent a tiny cup. And big yellow or green gum drops at two for a penny. And coconut strips the colors of the flag in waxed paper.
That’s Langston Hughes, believe it or not. He is best known as one of America’s most beloved poets and a major figure in African American literature. He also was an unrepentant candy lover. And a sad candy lover: by 1948, when he wrote the essay I’m quoting, penny candy had all but disappeared.
In the 1940s the children’s candy market began to experience dramatic changes. By 1946, the portion of the total candy output that was produced for the penny market had fallen to less than 4 percent. Both long term and short term forces conspired to make penny candy a nostalgic memory by mid-century. Penny candy had always represented the bottom end of the candy trade. “Better” candy stores avoided penny candy sales, viewing the children’s trade as an inconvenience and a distraction. Profit margins on penny goods were razor thin, and the penny candy merchant had to spend more on labor to serve the demanding but small-spending customers making numerous small purchases. The U.S. entry into World War II in 1942 brought the rationing of sugar and other candy ingredients. The candy industry succeeded in having candy designated an “essential food,” thereby assuring their continued access to sugar and other necessary commodities, but prices rose significantly. During the years of the war, about half the nation’s candy production went to provisioning the military, thereby creating reducing the amount of candy that could be sold domestically. The result of these forces was to drive out the penny candy trade. Bulk and box candies were far more profitable, and manufacturers, even those with nostalgic ties to the candy past, could no longer make economic sense of the penny lines.
No one was more eloquent in mourning than Hughes, who described the parched candy landscape that had replaced the jeweled palaces of his childhood:
Nowadays, most of the candies displayed in grocery shops (at least in the big towns) seem to be the standard brands of Hershey’s and O. Henry’s the same from coast to coast–monotonously unvarying–and costing a nickel or more. Not even a child can shop for a penny in this day and age. And they don’t have the fun of peeping and peering and puzzling and selecting such as one had when faced with a wonderful array of unwrapped penny candies in the old days.
Source: Langston Hughes, “Childhood Memories Of Good Old Home,” The Chicago Defender 18 December 1948.
1 comment January 20, 2010
Taking Candy from a Soldier
U.S. soldiers in the nineteen-teens were distinguished by many virtues: their bravery, their manliness, and above all, for their craving for sweets.
Rations in the Army around 1916 included bread, potatoes, bacon and beans or fresh meat, cheese, coffee, tea, butter, milk, sugar, an orange or an apple, pepper, salt, and 1/4 pound sugar per day. Given such blandly nutritious fare, it wasn’t a surprise that the boys serving in the military would be glad of some candy.
In a report on military morale in 1917, Dr. Naismith, a profesor of physical education at University of Kansas, encouraged gifts of candy to accompany letters from home, in preference of “sob letters and night gowns,” typical items that Naismith called “the most worrying and useless things the boys on the border last summer received from home.” As Dr. Naismith noted, “his appetite for sweets, too, is very keen. The army ration, wholesome and nourishing, hasn’t many trimmings, so candy always is warmly welcomed by the boys.” .
The call for candy did not go unanswered. In August 1917, Wallace and Co. of Brooklyn began advertising the “Service Package” to retail dealers. This box of confection was “designed and packed for the boys” and meant to be purchased on subscription: the customer would pay, and the retailer would send out the package on a regular basis. This would be an easy sale: “We know there is nothing a soldier or sailor on active duty appreciates more than candy. His chances of buying candy for himself are very small, therefore such a gift, delivered by Uncle Sam’s Postal Department, is a most welcome addition to the service rations and a cheerful remembrance from home.” And what would the happy soldier receive in his Service Package? One package each of lemon drops, wild cherry drops, and broken candy, two rations of eating chocolate, and two packages of chewing gum, all wrapped in a box covered with inspirational images of soldiers at salute, cannons, explosions, and the American eagle.
Even before the U.S. joined the European war, the soldiers’ love of candy was a common theme. By 1915 there were reports that “one of the finest old American slang terms is about to succumb to the stern demands of war.” Where Americans used to say “taking candy from a baby,” now it would be more accurate to describe that tearful tug of war as “taking candy from a soldier.” One pundit went so far as to suggest a novel military strategy based on candy: “Put a chocolate statue of the Kaiser in the square at Berlin and our men will take it in a week” (attributed to Sir John French, British Army Inspector-General).
By 1916, confectioners were viewing the impending war with a certain optimism, as a huge marketing opportunity:
We know that a country at war does not lose its desire for confectionery. The European war has taught us however that huge standing armies consume huge quantities of candy, and it is a fact that thousands upon thousands of men who seldom if ever eat candy before, begin to crave for sweetmeats after they feel the rigors of active army life.
Before World War I, candy had been seen primarily as the province of lovers and children. No longer: the experience of war would make candy a man’s game. The market for candy created by the war was the theme of the 1916 address by R. F. Mackenzie, president of the National Confectioners Association (NCA), at the annual convention:
The world must have its sweets. As the wise man has said, ’Candy’s fair in love and war.’ The lover demands his package of bon-bons with which to propitiate his sweetheart; and the veteran of the tranches requests his strength-renewing tablet of chocolate.
As U.S. soldiers returned to civilian life in the roaring 1920s, their candy appetite propelled an enormous boom in candy invention, production, and sales. It would not be an exaggeration to say that the American candy business of today–and especially the primacy of the candy bar–is the legacy of the dough-boys ’appetite for sweets.’
Sources: “The Chocolate Soldier,” International Confectioner October 1915, p. 36; “Preparedness,” International Confectioner June 1916, p. 39; R.F. Mackenzie speech to NCA, 10 May 1916, International Confectioner May 1916, p. 41-42. Wallace and Company “Service Package” ad, International Confectioner August 1917, p. 14-15. Dr. Naismith quotation, International Confectioner June 1917, 61.
1 comment January 18, 2010
