You Are What You Were. Celebrate Retro Pop Culture At Retroland.
Who says a candy bar must contain chocolate? Certainly that is the norm, but a few products have managed to leave the cocoa behind and still carve a niche for themselves in the market. One such candy bar is the often-hard-to-find but search-worthy Zagnut bar. Assuming one has no allergies to peanuts or coconut, it is a flavorful and unique treat that has managed to stay above water, despite its chocolate-laden competition, for almost eighty years.
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Chicago has long held a reputation as the candy capitol of the United States. And, in 1924, the Schutter-Johnson Company launched a unique new chew to the windy city, one that would delight children and dentists alike. Christened as the Bit-O-Honey, it was guaranteed to give a kid’s jaw muscles a workout like no other.
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For many a decade, young fans of America’s favorite pastime watched their heroes stuff enormous wads of chewing tobacco into their cheek, a particularly dangerous habit that most parents didn’t want their kids to emulate. Then, in 1977, a veteran ballplayer named Jim Bouton was sitting in the dugout, watching the younger players follow in the footsteps of their chewing predecessors, when it occurred to him that someone ought to make a gum that looked like chewing tobacco, in the hopes that it might serve as a healthier substitute for this nasty habit. The result was Big League Chew.
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Some people prefer their gum in stick form. Others have grown accustomed to the slight crunch that a candy coating offers, as is commonly found in the typical gumball. Problem is, gumballs aren’t exactly the sort of thing that is easily carried in one’s pocket, unless you have an affinity for chewing lint. At the turn of the century, however, candy makers offered a compromise of sorts - a gum that offered the portability of sticks, without sacrificing that sugary shell of yummy goodness. And ever since, Chiclets have been sold around the world, both in gumball machines and in the familiar rectangular box with the cellophane window.
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For their considerably short existence, those little chewy candy squares known as Bonkers! made quite the impression. Some will remember their soft pliability, others their flavorful punch. And for anyone regularly watching television in the 80s, it was impossibly not to take notice of their humorous commercials that featured giant fruit dropping from the sky and landing on an unwitting bystander. Whatever the reason, they are a candy that remains sorely missed from legions of fans that still wonder whatever happened to their beloved Bonkers!
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In 1921, the Curtiss Candy Company introduced a candy bar called the Baby Ruth, yet insisted that it had no connection to the reigning Sultan of Swat, Babe Ruth, who was the biggest sports hero in the nation at the time (lest they have to pay royalties). Instead, the company maintained that they named their product after President Grover Cleveland's young daughter Ruth. While the debate still continues in some circles, there was no similar ambiguity when another baseball legend, Yankee slugger Reggie Jackson, was honored with his own candy bar in 1978. Simply named Reggie!, and featuring a large likeness of the hitter on its bright orange wrapper, there was no doubt that Jackson officially sanctioned this candy treat.
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Many toys have come and gone over the years, but create one that spits out candy every time you play with it and you've got a sure winner. Better yet, offer a vast selection of dispensers modeled after just about every pop culture icon to ever exist, each filled to the brim with a stack of yummy fruit-flavored confections, and you're assured to win the heart of every kid (and collector) in existence. Yes, today our focus is on Pez candy.
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It’s hard to fathom childhood without chewing gum. Nostalgia just seeps out of the stuff. Maybe you recall the comic tales of Bazooka Joe, or the stick of stale pink stuff in a pack of baseball cards, or the gum that squirts when you chew it, one thing is for certain; chewing gum has its place in popular culture. Endless varieties of type and flavor are available. But you may not know how it all started, which is where Adams Gum comes in.
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Not since the Tootsie Pop has a candy demanded so much self-control. Razzles claim to fame is that they start out as a candy, but once chewed magically transform into chewing gum. That is, if you can get over the hump of letting the transformation take place. It is all too tempting to simply swallow them in candy form. But for those with the virtue of patience, yummy gum soon follows.
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For generations of kids, candy buttons have given a big bang for the buck in the sugar high department. Imagine little candy droplets adhered to a white strip of what basically looked like adding machine paper. Inexpensive, they were an easy choice for a kid to make – sugar domes in every color of the rainbow (or at least pink, yellow and blue.) And while they were marketed as being flavored differently, they really all just tasted like sugar – and there was certainly nothing wrong with that.
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