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MEMORIES:
Life Savers candy was invented because the famed candy maker’s daughter died after choking on a hard candy. The hole in the middle is there to prevent more deaths due to suffocation, thus the name Life Savers. True story! Okay, so it’s not… oftentimes, fiction is favored over truth, particularly in the eyes of pop culture and more people know and remember that urban legend than the actual and somewhat boring origins of an all-time favorite American candy.
In 1912, a Cleveland, Ohio chocolatier by the name of Clarence Crane was looking for a supplement to his line of chocolates that just couldn’t hold up against hot Midwestern summers. Nope! No dead daughters. Mr. Crane wanted something to distinguish his new candies from the standard fare imported from Europe, which were typically pillow-shaped. Within a year, Crane sold the formula for his Peppermint Life Savers to one Edward Noble for a scant $2,900 – which would equal around $56,000 today. They changed the packaging from a cardboard tube to a tinfoil wrapping to keep the candies fresh, and a star was born.
Soon, other flavors started showing up, not the least of which were the fruit flavors, introduced in 1924, originally manufactured as solid candies with no hole. Within 5 years, technology changed and the fruit candies were allowed their familiar hole in the center. It would be 6 years later, in 1935 that the first Original Five-Flavor rolls would debut with the flavors of cherry, lemon, lime, orange and pineapple. Many flavors have come and gone since then. In fact, the Five Flavor roll went through a complete overhaul in 2003 (much to traditionalist dismay) and includes cherry, pineapple, blackberry, raspberry, watermelon and grape. Other flavors are easy to find, such as Butter Rum, Spear-O-Mint, Wint-O-Green and many more!
Though they’re considered candies today, they were marketed to the masses as a “breath improver.” The somewhat-comical packaging originally pictured an old seaman tossing a life preserver out to a young female swimmer with the ubiquitous slogan “For That Stormy Breath.”
Since we’re on the topic of stormy, many of us can remember a sleepover or night camping out brought to life by the crunching of Wint-O-Green Life Savers. The truth of the matter is all hard sugar-based candies do emit some light when bitten, but often times the light isn’t even detectable to the human eye. The effect is called triboluminescence (try saying that five times fast!), and when combined with oil of wintergreen, an ingredient in Wint-O-Green Life Savers which also happens to be fluorescent (a fluorescent soaks in light of a shorter, less-visible wavelength, and emits light at longer wavelengths) the effects puts on a blue-tinged light show on the visible end of the light spectrum. Perfect for in-the-dark fun!
Fans of the circular candy have been able find their favorite flavors in a variety of forms, from the original hard candies to lollipops, gummi shapes as well as “creamy” variations called Crème Savers. Today, around 548 million Life Savers rolls are made each and every year, leaving us with plenty to choose from when we need to get our sweet fix.
