Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here too, and dates here in spirit, which is appropriate because this is the kind of a Halloween themed episode of short Stuff. Is it not, Chuck?
It's spoopy?
Spoopy spoopy? Is that what you said? For real?
Yeah? Are you gonna do this bit every year?
I don't remember you saying it, so yes, as long as I forget the next day, Yes, every year I'm going to do.
This spooky sboo b y is a lighthearted spooky Okay?
Is that your own trademark slogan? No?
Look it up?
Okay, I will look it up. Actually, I'll forget all about it and won't look it up, and then next year I'll agree to look it up again.
We should all pause. Let you look it up? Okay, since this is short Stuff, we'll just let the tape roll right.
Oh, look there it is. Yep, you're right spoopy.
No, I didn't make it up. It's a thing.
Okay. You know what else is the thing? Chuck?
Candy corn?
Candy corn. That's right, it is a thing. It's one of the most divisive candies. It's probably the most divisive holiday candy of all time.
Where do you land?
Oh, I don't like it at all.
Okay, do you like it? I mean there's a bit of a nostalgia play. I don't. I definitely can't say that. I think it's like, oh boy, this tastes great. I can't wait to eat it. But like if someone throws a candy corn in my mouth and I happen to be chewing, I'll be like, oh, that old, that old memory. But I don't go puh puh.
I got you. We need to get one of those house divided license plates, right, sure. So candy corn is actually super old. We know it's at least coming up on one hundred and fifty years old. They think it came out in the eighteen eighties. And by the way, thanks big time to history dot com, Better Homes and Gardens, Always a Treat dot com, mb Henry dot com and candystore dot com. A lot of dot coms in there. But the one of the things about candycorn is its
origins are murky. So people just generally say, yeah, this guy's the inventor.
Yeah exactly, I mean, are we going to that guy?
Sh No, let's talk about where it came from. Originally, we think.
Yeah, because previous to the actual corn, they were making these kinds of candies. And that's not to say the ones that were shaped that way, in color that way, but we're talking about mellow cream.
Yeah. You know those candy pumpkins. Yeah, that's mellow cream, right exactly. That to me is quintessential mellow cream, even more than candycorn. Yeah.
And apparently they used to make all sorts of phony vegetables made out of that junk because Americans were still farming and they could you know, if you had a little seven year old, you could be like, you got to work in the field all day. When you come home, you're going to get this mellow cream asparagus tip.
Or mellow cream back choi.
Yeah, oh boy.
You would think these little kids who were being forced into child labor, the last thing they would want to see in their candy were agricultural products. But apparently that's all they had to choose from. Now. The other thing to know about this this context that candy corn emerge from is that these candies were available year round, and the thing that made candy corns stand out among its peers is that it had three colors, technically two colors and the presence of all color.
Yeah. I like that. I like the way you put it.
So let's talk about the guy who actually is credited with inventing this. Probably is who cares at this point. He's been credited for so long it doesn't really matter.
Yeah, And he's from Philadelphia, and they like to take credit for everything. So we're talking about George Renninger is how I would pronounce it, or Renninger maybe, And he worked at the Wonderly Candy Company in Philly, the Brotherly Love City. Yeah.
And the reason why he's credited is that he was an employee there and they are known to be the first company to start producing these, and I guess he was a candy designer there. So Wonderly Candy Company was the first to put these out. They were out for a little while, and you could, like I said, they were available year round. All of these things were, and they weren't associated with Halloween. You could find them at
just about any celebration where they had candy treats. But the thing to know about them is they were so you know, like candy cigarettes or little candy people that you eat are candy things that look like other stuff. That's what candy corn was originally meant to be. And of course candy corn it's in the name, but we think of it today as like little kernels of corn that you would like eat. It was originally marketed as candy corn in the sense that corn was chicken feed.
So this was basically candy chicken feed. Is how candy corn started out.
Yeah, because apparently, and this is something that I didn't know. This to me is the fact of the show is that including a little bit after World War One, but previous to that, in a few years after apparently corn was kind of like a like a it's not a vegetable to start right, Yes, it was a garbage starch like people. It wasn't on the plates of most Americans, and you had to have been really hard up for food apparently to eat corn as a human.
It was just for chickens exactly. So this is what kids were eating. They would go to the store and get a box of chicken feed from the Golitz candy company. So this is the company that really exposed candy corn to the world.
Which is I love corn. Do you like corn?
Yeah? I like corn on the cob for some reason, once you take it off the cob, I think it's disgusting.
Oh, even in like a dish like a Lotte or like a salad or something.
It depends. It really depends on the dish. But like if it's canned, I mean, oh god, I can barely like talk about it.
You know the old story of when I was missing that front tooth and I would eat corn, and that would be little rows of uneaten corn every like two inches.
That was a Mad magazine cover too. I think it was so candy corns out there, the genies out of the bottle, as they say, kids are eating this candy chicken feed. But then by like the mid twentieth century, people ate corn normally, and by the mid twentieth century, Halloween was very much associated with candy. I think around this time is when candy corn really became linked to Halloween. It would be weird to see candy corn at Easter, but that's how it used to be. Friends.
Yeah, but now it's linked starting in the mid twentieth century, like you said, to Halloween, and we will take a break, yeah, yeah, and we'll talk about how you make this stuff right after this all right. You went to that website alwaysatreat dot com and they had a pretty good story there about how they used to manufacture this, and it's not
a whole lot different than they do it today. Obviously it's automated today, but back then, you would get a bunch of dudes and they would get sugar in corn syrup and some other you know, magical ingredients, and they would cook it and these big kettles and boil it
all up. They would ad a little marshmallow, maybe a little fond it to smooth it out a little bit, and forty five pounds at a time they would make this warm slurry and they would pour it into buckets called runners, and then these guys called stringers would walk backwards down a line and pour this candy into these little little molds, these little trays in that classic iconic kernel shape.
Yeah, and the trays were made of corn starch, and it would take three passes. For some reason, I don't understand why the stringers, the guys pouring the candy corn slurry into the mold, would walk backwards, do you.
No, I don't know. I was trying to think it might be easier to pour I mean it was probably had something to do with the setup.
I mean, I could understand if you're left handed you're walking backwards, but or if you're right handed, Yeah, I think right handed you'd be walking backwards if the thing was on your left. There's no explanation I can find for why they would walk backwards.
Well, they are from Philly, so maybe they were just like we're candy corn stringers, we walk backwards.
Yeah, probably that's the answer is as good as any. But the whole thing is that we would take three passes because they would put the white in, then the yellow, and then the orange. And that's how it was originally made. And basically nothing has changed except, like you said, it's become automated. They use essentially the same ingredients, which are you ready for this? It's like you said, made with sugar. It's made with fondon, which is sugar water and corn syrup.
It's made with corn syrup, which is a whole bunch of different sugars, mostly glucose, vanilla flavoring, and marshmallow cream which is made from corn syrup, sugar water and eggs. There's a lot of sugar in these things, and they alt them into a slurry, all those ingredients and they pour them into corn cornstarch molds just like they did one hundred something years ago.
Yeah. Boom, boom boom. They just layer up the colors just like that. More than and this is according to the National Confectioners Association. The NCAA says thirty five million pounds of this stuff, which amounts to nine billion pieces of candy corn, are produced annually in modern times.
Yes, and even in keeping in tradition, they make the machines work backward for some reason when they're pouring the slurry.
That's right, And are we done? Of course not, because somehow you found actual survey statistics on how popular this stuff was.
Yeah, because there's a thing. It's been around for almost one hundred and fifty years for a reason, and the reason is there's some people out there who actually like candy corn.
Yeah.
I know, it's weird. It's a weird thing to say, but it's true. So much so that the National Retail Iteration a font of statistics that have to do with shopping, purchasing and consumerism in general, so that in twenty nineteen, ninety five percent of people who shopped for Halloween stuff bought candy corn one of them. I wasn't either. We're in that weird five percent, but I can't believe it. The thing is is, I don't think all those people are eating candy corn necessarily. No.
And it turns out if you go on to crafty websites, there are all kinds of fun little crafts you can do with candy corn because it is a you know, the color itself lends itself to sort of fall feelings and fall crafts, so you can do all kinds of stuff. Basically, you can hot glue it on whatever you want to.
Basically. Yeah, I saw a cute one. I can't remember where, but if you spike a pumpkin, you can make a little candy corn pumpkin hedgehog. Ah. That's cute, that's adorable. Okay, So I found some more stats too, all.
Right, let's hear it, like, oh, I don't know where's it popular?
Yeah, candystore dot Com looked over sixteen years of their shipping data. That's amazing to identify the top three favorite candies for each state, and candy corn was in the top three. It was not the first for any state, but it was in the top three for a bunch of different states, from South Carolina to Maine to North Dakota to Michigan to New York, and then nationwide it was number eight.
That's amazing, and we should thank Leslie, the temp at candystore dot Com that month, who they tasked with doing this.
You're right for sure? Or Leslie?
Yeah, poor Leslie, that's a right. Probably wouldn't a bad job, all right. They also did a poll, and I think Leslie was in charge of this too, because did they pull three thousand people.
Thirty two hundred and forty seven they pour?
Did they pull thirty five hundred?
Nope?
I guess they pulled everyone that they had their email contact for, which was like you said, three two hundred and four, and they said that do you like it? Do you hate it? Why? And nostalgia, which is what I mentioned that was one of the big reasons why people get this stuff. It's something they had when they were a kid that they might have liked the taste of when they were a kid, and then as adults they'll say, well, you know, I gotta I gotta be in that fall spirit and let's let's grab a bag.
Yeah, and then sweetness was another one for people who like candy corn, and then conversely, sweetness was a big reason people don't like candy corn.
Yeah.
One of the respondents that it was like biting into a sugar cube, and that's pretty close to accurate. There's also the waxy texture that puts some people off, including me.
I actually don't mind that part. Yeah, I'll tell you what though, I haven't had one in years, but it's an unforgettable flavor.
Yeah, I have had it. I can bring that flavor to mine too, I just I don't want it again.
Essentially, Yeah, I'm with you.
And overall though, out of that thirty two and forty seven Americans, they pulled fifty six percent we're fans and forty four percent were not. So that there are more people, at least according to that pole, who like candy corn than don't.
That's right. And if you thought it couldn't get any better everybody, Leslie drilled down even further and found out how people how people eat them. Fifty one percent just pop it in their mouth and crunch it like it's
a piece of popcorn. Normal sixteen percent start with the widest bit, which is the yellow bit, and then thirty three percent conversely flip it over and start at that little, smaller white end, Which is amazing to me that someone actually takes that tiny of a bite of something that small.
Yeah, some people like that tiny, little white as if it tastes any different, right, it definitely does not. It should know. If it does, you might want to take it back to the store because there's something wrong with.
The che corn. Yeah, this white part tastes good.
You got anything else?
I got nothing else.
Well, we're getting close to Halloween, everybody, which means short stuff is out.
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