I am writing a new book and a character arrived with a sweet tooth. That’s how these things work, as the writers who visit here know. You’re toodling along, making stuff up, and suddenly there’s this little girl lying belly down on the banks of the Gwynn’s Falls, a net at the ready to catch the crayfish (as we called them) and the next thing I know, she’s demanding that her new friend help her acquire “Circus Peanuts.”
I don’t think I’ve ever actually eaten a circus peanut and, having read up on them on the Internet, I don’t think I ever will. But my small research foray — permissible because I’ve written 1,800 words today* — reminded me of the vast assortment of odd candy available during my childhood. At “Candy You Ate as a Kid” — http://www.oldtimecandy.com/decade-list.htm** — you can find a list of candy by the decade. The ’60s appear to be a pretty weak decade for candy innovation, with few new products being introduced. (The ’40s were worse, but I assume sugar rationing during the war had something to do with that.***) And a lot of the new candies of the ’60s were chewing gums, which I don’t count at all.
But one entry stood out — Chocolate Babies. And those reminded me of these long rows of sugar babies that my sister and I ate as a child, tiny infants in pink and blue swaddling, with — IMHO — blond hair and little white toes. However, I can’t find anything like that in my research and Googling “Sugar Babies” is pretty much destined to failed. Anyone else remember these? They are distinct from Chocolate Babies because they came in those long rows. And I think the flavor/consistency was similar to those little sugar buttons we used to eat from wax paper.
Still, the website is a great resource for Proustian memories. Walnettos! Squirrel Nut Zippers! Pixy Stix! Marathon Bars. Perhaps it’s just because I recently read True Confections — HIGHLY RECOMMENDED — but I could spend hours browsing this list of candy by the decade.
Memories of favorite candies, if you’re so inclined on this first day of Lent.
*Not good words, mind you, but words.
**It’s Ash Wednesday, the day after Mardi Gras. I am way too tired to do the html formatting.
***The ’80s are even worse than the ’60s. Big League Chew? Ugh.
Yes, I remember we’d all head out to the Ben Franklin with spare change and buy candy. Wax lips! I can’t remember if they were edible, but I remember wearing them. And then there was candy at the pool. The stretchy necklaces with pastel beads, and long red licorice were my favorites.
Also, I don’t really have much of a sweet tooth anymore, and I wonder if it’s because I drink so much wine. Oops.
Squirrel Nut Zippers were a *candy*? and here I thought they were just a nineties neo-swing band.
Hate to admit this, Laura, but I loved Big League Chew when I was a kid. When I played Little League and Hot Stove, I used to keep a big wad of the stuff in my mouth whenever I sat on the bench. (What? You don’t actually think they let me PLAY, do you?)
Cornelia,
One of my all-time favorite band names of the late 70s, early 80s was Poison Squirrel because it was inspired by one of the founder’s misperception of the Romper Room greeting, “Good morning, boys and squirrels.”
Betsy: Food for thought, indeed, as my sweet tooth is much reduced.
Jim: To each is own junk food, but gum designed to make kids think they are using chewing tobacco? Even if it’s good, it’s a low point.
Used to take a dime or fifteen cents to the corner store and come out with a bag of candy – this was the mid/late 50s. My favorites were Necco wafers, Bit-o-Honey, Chuckles, orange slices, wax lips, Boston Baked Beans, Clark bars, Chunky bars (back when they were really chunky), PayDays, nonpareils, red licorice strings and Fizzies.
My mother and I also used to have a continuing discussion about whether Hersheys or Nestles was the better chocolate.
Loved walking miles to the movies on Saturdays with my two years older cousin way back in the late 1950s. (Yes, 10 and 12 year olds could actually go places on their own without being driven!) This was a gorgeous, ornate movie palace – complete with lovely spraying fountains, fish ponds, etc — where we’d buy Sugar Daddy pops (carmel lollipops) that would last through the entire movie. If it was a double feature,and it usually was, then we’d share a box of Good ‘n Plenty….
What is with you people?? where are the chocolate lovers? When I was a kid,a Hershey bar was a nickel but there was also a Klein bar- chocolate with peanuts for 3 cents.
I think dentists created Jujubes and Mary Janes so my fillings would rip out. I think Jujubes are gone now.
Is this what you were looking for; they’re now produced by Tootsie Roll Industries. One of the variety of Sugar Babies is Chocolate:
http://www.tootsie.com/products.php?pid=160
Mmmmm….. this is so fun to read and think about.
Malted milk balls, horehound drops and those little square taffy things which were four in a pack — peanut butter flavor was my favorite. Can’t remember the name, but that was a bargain!
LOL Clair — isn’t “communion” everybody’s Necco wafer game?
Chocolate cigarettes, they even had a paper wrapper to mimic the real thing. Those little wax bottles that you bit the top off and drank the sugary liquid inside. Jujubes and Juicy Fruit. Mallomars, yum yum
Circus peanut update: They are sold in my local hardware store, where I was shopping just two weeks ago. I have zero memory of seeing them then, although I always glance bemusedly at the small aisle of candy. My Baltimore hardware store does not offer a candy/snack selection.
So, were the circus peanuts planted in my brain, like some egg that was destined to release that image? Or are the two things unconnected? I have a hunch that it’s the former.
Meanwhile, I love chocolate. I am more partial to dark chocolate these days, but I still yearn for Butterfingers, Baby Ruths and peanut clusters. I especially yearn for, but never buy, the incredibly cheap peanut clusters, the ones from off-brands that always looked (and tasted) a little dusty and chemical. I’d like one right now.
Laura — Fifth Avenue bar is way superior to Butterfinger. A coworker turned me on to them recently and… the rest is hips — I mean, history.
#1 of all times: Tootsie Rolls
BB Bats in banana flavor. Strawberry, too.
Candy necklaces
Chocolate Easter bunnies
Candy lips
Hershey bars (cost a nickel)
Wintergreen lifesavers
Zotz!
Cigarette gum, candy bracelets and necklaces, lick-m sticks, Chunky bars, Pop Rocks. Did I mention Zotz?
Along with Peeps, Circus Peanuts are probably the grossest candy ever made.
M’Lou,
The Fifth Avenue bar is also featured in the passage I wrote this morning. My sister taught me how to eat them very slowly — first the nut, then the chocolate casing, which, when nibbled away, revealed a peanut butter bar of sorts.
But I prefer miniature Butterfingers, what can I say?
We had a candy store at the corner of my street (Later I found out from my mother that it was a small general store but all I remember is the L shaped glass cased penny candy). We would stop on the way home from school and purchase something – I got in trouble for eating and wearing the candy necklace because it got my uniform blouse dirty. We loved to smack the Bonomo turkish taffy – it would break into pieces and we could share. We went on a quest a few years ago to try to find this but they don’t seem to make it anymore. Remember how stale the bubble gum was in the baseball cards! I like a few of the Circus Peanuts – a strange chewy texture that dissolves in your mouth. Now Berger Cookies and Berger Cake are favorites in our house.
A nickle box of Lemon Heads were my go-to candy, back in the day. They’re spherical candies (roughly the size of a garbonzo bean) that you pop into your mouth and roll on your tongue and cheeks. The thing about them is that they start out sort of waxy, and then there’s an explosion of sweet lemony flavor that might last a minute, and then they have no flavor at all! At that point the experience is like having a ball bearing in your mouth….sort of the soft landing after all that flavor earlier on.
Butterfingers are good for a change of pace; they’re sort of an inside-out Clark bar, which was another fave
Pay Day candy bars (mostly peanuts) were a long-time fave; then Snickers stole my heart; and now Reese’s peanut butter cups – especially the holiday shaped ones (Christmas trees and Easter eggs leap to mind) are my impulse buy at the gas station.
Never went for Pixie Sticks (like eating Kool-Aid powder) nor Wacky Taffy (bath tub caulking), although my friends did.
Back when I was in elementary school, sun flower seeds were THE rage. I remember that seemingly every drinking fountain had the #%&% shells blocking the drains
NERDS!! I loved tipping them straight from the box into my nouth. And POP ROCKS were also good fun the way they’d explode in my mouth. (That’s what she said.)
I think those babies you were looking for are baby icing decorations. They are made with royal icing just like those sugar buttons.
My old time favorites were Squirrels and Mary Janes
Candy cigarettes, loved them–pure sugar–very politically incorrect now. It was so cool to pretend to smoke, and they melted in your mouth. (This would have been the ’60′s.)
Necco Wafers, Atomic Fireballs were my favorites. But I “smoked” candy cigarettes, too. I have memories of eating waxy something cute and never touching again.
In Stein Mart other day, and I saw this little basket of penny candy — fireballs, mary janes, etc. You got about 15 pieces for $8. The price of nostalgia. I can get a lot of Dove Dark Chocolate for $8. And pretend it’s good for me.
In my catholic elementary school in Annapolis, we students sold candy during recess to other students for some charity. everyday — the Annapolis dentists love St. Mary’s students. Anyway, some favorites were Black Cow, Smarties, giant SweetTarts, Now and Laters. Those were the days!
There was some kind of candy bar that tasted like malted milk, it might have been called Malt Shop that I would get from the machine in the bowling alley. It was wonderful.
I think that the poster who suggested royal icing cake decorations for your ‘sugar babies’ may be correct. They were/are hard sugar in color designs that came in sheets. Currently there is a baby face in a blue or pinkbonnet design available.
I went to a small, non-politically correct, non-health conscience Catholic school in 7th and 8th grade. We’re talking early 1970′s here. On special pizza lunch days, Sister Raymunda sold penny candy at a small card table near the entrance to the church basement, which served as a cafeteria. I will never forget trying to decide what to get while standing in front of her table with my mouth watering. Gum cigarettes were a favorite of mine. When you blew on them, the sugar blew off and looked like smoke. Talk about a bad influence. Other favorites included Squirell Nut Zippers, Mary Janes, Swedish Fish, Sixlets, Sweetarts, Bottlecaps, Wax soda bottles, Pixie-sticks, Sugar Babies, Sugar Daddy caramel lollipops, $100,000 bars, Bazooka Bubble gum,(i could blow the biggest bubbles)!
Needless to say I really liked candy- as did my siblings, cousins and friends. If we had money for candy and it was a Saturday, life was good. It was all so simple then. Candy was a sort of equalizer. If you had it you could improve your social standing to varying degrees by creating new alliances that guaranteed you didn’t get pick last for Red Rover or softball. I still look with fondness on those candy-filled days. Well that’s all, now me and my mouth full of fillings are going to look for some chocolate, which is not what I am giving up for Lent.
I think Betsy did buy chocolate babies, as did the two youngest All-of-a-Kind Family girls.
1. My favorite, because of the number of pieces of candy for the price, was Good’n'Plenty. Everybody sing: “Choo choo Charlie was an engineer.(insert missing words)….he used Good’n'Plenty candy to make his train run. Charlie says love my Good’n'Plenty, Charlie says really rings the bell (?), Charlie says love my Good’n'Plenty, don’t know any other candy that I love so well”. And that was from memory!
2. My favorite missing-nobody-ever-heard-of candy was a cube box (about 2.5 inches per side) made to look like a child’s building block with letters printed on the outside. Inside the small hard opaque candies were in the shape of letters (educational candy!). I remember the drugstore where I bought them very well. This would have been the mid-60′s.
3. I looked everywhere for Laura’s baby-shaped candies (because I am a curious sort). I even contacted a wonderful woman named Darlene who has the following very fun site that you should all visit: http://candywrappermuseum.com/ and her response was: “Wow, no! It sounds great. I keep an eye out for magazine ads as well as wrappers, and that’s how sometimes I learn of things that I haven’t personally seen, but I have not encountered anything like that from either source. I’ll keep an eye out and let you know if I ever run across it. Stranger things have happened.”
What if I made the babies up? Now that would be an interesting bit of business to give a character — a woman so twisted that she imagined eating rows and rows of newborns.
Meanwhile, in another “Dang, my mind is weird moment,” I received a belated Valentine’s Day gift yesterday, an action figure of Go-Go. She is the school girl in Kill Bill, Volume I, but I would swear to you that, much as I admire the film, I had no idea she was called Go-Go.
And yet . . . there is a character in my new novel who, as a child, was known as Go-Go.
[Taps forehead. Listens for sound, much like the squirrel in CHARLIE AND THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, testing Veruca Salt's soundness.] What is going on in there?
Big League Chew and Fun Dip.
Well, Laura, IF you made up the candy babies (and I made up what are essentially an infant’s toys in the from of candies), then what might that say about either of us?
p.s.–Just had a flash of making those zig-zag necklaces with folded up gum wrappers (like Juicy Fruit). Must have chewed a lot of gum to get enough wrappers for those!
p.p.s.–Had a 2nd flash of penny machines on the platform of the T in Boston (visiting grandparents). Put in a penny and get out a tiny box with 2 Chiclets gum in it. It seemed very cool at the time. Reminds me now of how you can get wonderful candy on the tube platforms in London now.
Those candy buttons that came on long strips of paper and fun dip (from the ice cream truck). I have never had nor seen a chocolate baby, but didn’t our friend Betsy Ray buy them at Mrs. Chubbock’s store?
Laura’s mention of Butterfingers makes my mouth long for one right now. But back in the day, for me, it was a Bit-o-honey, aka the Dentists’ Friend!–recently saw them and Mary Janes by the bag in of all places Michaels, the craft chain. I almost bought them. There was a small grocery store up the street from my grade school and if you were in your St. Joe’s uniform, Fred, who ran the store, would give you 2cents off whatever you bought.
Early ’50′s, Julian’s Store across from Turner School, Wilkinsburg (Pgh) PA: My first existential dilemma: “Do you spend your penny on the candy that tastes best or the one that has the most/lasts the longest?
Zotz for me too. They were hard candy on the outside and fizzy center! Verrryyy cool! Also Pop Rocks. There was that persistent rumor that the kid Mikey from the “He’ll eat anything” commercials had died from eating Pop Rocks and Coke. (Fizzed to death)
“My first existential dilemma: “Do you spend your penny on the candy that tastes best or the one that has the most/lasts the longest?”
A great point! I never thought about it in just that way, but indeed candy bars are a sort of wham-bam-thankyou-ma’am experience; all good stuff and all too soon gone.
Maybe that’s the reason Lemon Heads appealed to me; flavorful enough but also (cumulatively) long lasting
One of my most vivid memories of grade school (late 60′s) is of green apple gum. Occasionally, when I see a pack, I buy it trying to relive those innocent days. Then I discover I’m more fond of the memories than the taste of that awful stuff!