Candy Dish Blog

We’re starting a new feature this week, the Friday Five.  It’s a Top 5 list of just about anything related to candy.  If you have ideas for an upcoming Friday Five, please let us know.

You may have noticed we’ve been talking about television and candy this week.  That’s in preparation for this weekend’s Golden Globe awards.  Personally, I’m pulling for House to win best TV drama and Glee to win Best TV comedy or musical.  Come to think of it, I can’t remember candy being prominently featured on either or those shows, though (Glee does frequently feature Slurpees, however).

I hope lack of candy coverage doesn’t hurt their chances.  After all, Seinfeld won three Golden Globes and that show featured candy all the time.

Elaine loves 'em!

Top Five Candy Moments on Seinfeld

1. Heir to Oh Henry! candy bar fortune
Elaine meets up with Sue Ellen, an old high-school friend who is now an heiress to the Oh Henry! candy bar fortune.  She’s notable for her lack of an important, uh, foundation garment.

2. Tweetie Pez dispenser
Jerry’s Pez dispenser makes Elaine laugh very loudly at George’s new girlfriend’s piano recital.  Later, the girlfriend hears Elaine laugh and realizes who ruined her concert.

3. Junior Mint in the operating room
In season four, Kramer invites Jerry to join him in a surgical viewing suite where they accidentally knock a Junior Mint into the patient’s open chest. Explaining later how it happened, Kramer says he didn’t expect anyone to turn down a Junior Mint. He makes a good point.

4. The Hanging Twix
George is outraged when he puts money into a vending machine and his Twix candy bar fails to drop.  He returns later to find the hanging Twix missing from the machine. He confronts the mechanic who he believes “stole” his candy bar and claims that the cookie crumbs on his face are clear evidence that the mechanic took it away from him.

5. The Jujubes incident
Elaine gets busted  for stopping to buy candy when she should have been rushing to the hospital to visit her friend after an accident.  Her candy of choice: Jujubes.  Her explanation: ”Because they’re Jujubes.  And I love them.”  Sounds reasonable to me.

Have I missed an important candy moment on Seinfeld?  What’s your favorite?

My lovely wife suggested that we put up some of the old commercials for Almond Joy and Mounds. These sure were some of my favorites as a lad, with their goofy images and madcap high jinks. Something struck me as I watched these, though. The commercials clearly refer to the Peter Paul brand, and that got me wondering what ever happened to that company.

Here is a brief explanation I found on the Hershey site, detailing the history of these particular candy bars:

The first product of the Peter Paul Candy Manufacturing Company, established in 1919 in New Haven, Connecticut, was called “Konabar” and was a blend of coconut, fruits, nuts and chocolate. All products were made at night when air was coolest and sold fresh, door-to-door the following day. In 1920 the MOUNDS candy bar, sweetened coconut enrobed in dark chocolate, was introduced.

During World War II Peter Paul was faced with severe shortages of sugar and coconut which had been shipped from the Philippines before war broke out. Rather than sacrifice quality, the company discontinued some of its lesser selling brands and concentrated production on the MOUNDS candy bar. Over the years Peter Paul added several products to its line, including ALMOND JOY candy bar and YORK Peppermint Pattie.

Cadbury and Peter Paul merged in 1978, and Hershey Foods purchased the company’s U.S. operations in 1988.

Interesting stuff. And now here are the commercials we all loved:

From 1970:

From 1977:

Thank you, lovely wife. That was a heck of a suggestion!

Almond Joy by Rakka.

Remember the owl who told the young boy how many licks it took to get to the center of the Tootsie Pop? The video below is the most popular version, being just 30 seconds, but there is a one-minute version, which is like an extended play remix. You know, for candy.

Many thanks to Jenni Spinner for recommending this one. What’s your favorite?

This is TV week here on Candy Dish Blog and I have been looking up old candy commercials from my youth. I have looked at lots of old Kit Kat commercials on You Tube and am amazed that although none of them seems particularly familiar, the catchy tune is imprinted on my brain and probably always will be. I suppose that’s the mark of a good ad campaign.

What is your favorite candy commercial from either back in the day or yesterday?

Remember Mikey from the Life commercials?  It’s ok if you don’t.  To be honest, I don’t either, nor, to Susan’s dismay, do I remember The Facts of Life, Different Strokes, or Laverne & Shirley.  As I stared at Susan blankly while she sang me these unfamiliar theme songs, she exclaimed “ya know what’s wrong with your generation?  Your sitcoms didn’t have theme songs.”

Psh, well at least my generation never believed that eating Pop Rocks and drinking soda made some cereal commercial kid’s stomach explode!  My generation is far too skeptical to believe such absurd rumors.  Besides, we’ve always had the internet to dispel urban legends with real hard scientific facts.

The candy science of Pop Rocks is surprisingly simple.  They are made almost the same way as typical hard candy.  The only difference is that prior to the cooling step, the hot liquid sugar is carbonated with tiny little bubbles of carbon dioxide.  When the sugar solution hardens into candy, the CO₂ bubbles become trapped in the solid candy matrix.  Soda is carbonated the same way, except that it remains a liquid.

We should really get Carl to help us with the math, but the total amount of CO₂ will be equal to the sum of the CO₂ in the soda and the CO₂ in the Pop Rocks.  No extra CO₂ or other potentially explosive gases are produced by this combination, thus no explosion ensues.

Don’t believe me?  Try this rockin’ experiment yourself.  Pour one packet of Pop Rocks into a balloon.  Slowly enclose the balloon over the opening of a small Coke bottle.  Let the contents of the balloon fall into the coke bottle and see what happens.  In the theoretically unlikely event that the balloon pops, please report back here to discuss your results.

Pop Rocks by inajeep.

I don’t think this commercial aired in the U.S. but I could be wrong. All said and done, I am not sure why this ad works but it does. It’s catchy, cute and you really just want to go nuts when the girl starts freestyling. It’s like watching really good breakdancing.

For the record, in my years of doing portraits, the kids I have photographed easily number in the tens of thousands and I have never had any of the do this.

If you were up really early yesterday morning, you may have seen the CBS Sunday Morning feature on the Future of Candy, part of the Tomorrow Show series with Mo Rocca (who I love on NPR’s Wait, Wait – Don’t Tell Me).  In the event that you like to spend Sunday morning sleeping in, or getting ready for Sunday football, you can watch the segment on the CBS Web site.

Go ahead, watch it.  We’ll wait.

Regular readers of the Candy Dish blog have already heard most of what was discussed including the importance of flavors, the trend toward savory and the influence of global cultures on American candy. 

A student at Resident Course pours hot candy into moulds

NCA provided some of the background used to put together that story and if you watch the first half of the segment very carefully you’ll see a few shots from our Resident Course in Confectionery Technology, which we affectionately call Candy School.

That’s right.  I said Candy School.  Sorry, the course is not open the public … but if it were, would you sign up?  What would you contribute to the future of candy?