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Ye Olde Poison Candy
In the early years of the twentieth century, as today, children seemed vulnerable. They ate a lot of candy. Bad candy. Penny candies in particular were blamed for endangering children’s health with...
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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...
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Hershey’s: Why a Kiss is Just a Kiss
Have you ever wondered why Hershey’s Kisses are called “kisses”? Here’s the official answer from Hershey’s Inc: While it’s not known exactly how KISSES got their name, it is a popular theory that the...
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Black Crows or Black Rose?
Black Crows: do you know this candy? It’s a venerable gummy licorice drop, from the same people who bring you fruity Dots. But while Dots are in every movie concession and drug store bin that I come...
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The Beginning of Candy
Well, not the beginning of candy for all time. Let’s say, the beginning of the American candy industry. 1847. That’s the year Oliver Chase, a Boston druggist, came up with the idea of a machine to...
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Another Tootsie Girl
Here at Candy Professor, we’re on the elusive trail of “Tootsie.” The official Tootsie Roll story is that candy inventor Leo Hirschfeld named the chewy chocolate bite after his little daughter Clara,...
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Ecstasy Candy Hearts? I doubt it.
What does this look like to you? Valentines candy? Or the party drug Ecstasy? A report surfaced in Canada last week of a stash of the substance depicted above seized during a drug bust. The perps had...
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Contagious Cavities
One of the favorite themes of the candy alarmists is dental decay: candy causes cavities! How many times have you heard that one? But it just ain’t so. From no less an authority than the New York...
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Drunken Gummy Bears
The latest teen scandal: getting drunk on gummy bears. I heard it this way, from CBS Newspath (Salinas CA): They’re a sweet staple of any kid’s afternoon pick me up. But now Hollister police—who...
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Black Crows Unmasked
Some time ago I published a post on the disputed nomenclature of the candy we know as “Black Crows” (read it here). Candy lore has it that the real name was supposed to be “Black Rose,” but some...
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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...
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