Remembrance of Candy Bars Past
How a wave of consolidation lay waste to regional treats like the Fig Pie and the Seven Up BarBy STEVE ALMOND
In Merriam, Kan., the Russell Sifers Candy Company produces what must be the messiest candy bar in the United States. The Valomilk, first introduced in 1931, is a thin cup of chocolate filled with vanilla syrup. It is virtually impossible to eat without getting syrup on your face. For years, the bar came with its own cautionary slogan: "When it runs down your chin, you know it's a Valomilk."
Farther north, in a low-slung factory in St. Joseph, Mo., the bright pink gobs rolling down the assembly line are the sweet centers of the Cherry Mash. They have been the flagship of the Chase Candy Company since they were introduced in 1918.
A couple of miles east of downtown Nashville, the Standard Candy Company makes the GooGoo Cluster, a disc of caramel and marshmallow covered in milk chocolate, dappled with peanuts, then drenched in more chocolate. The GooGoo, which lays claim to being one of the oldest bars in America, is considered by most Southerners to be the official candy bar of Dixie.
These companies are the face of what the candy industry in America used to be. Each city or region had its own factories, and people could actually see and smell the place where their favorite sweets were made. Coming from a particular town meant that you ate a particular kind of candy bar. Because there was no refrigeration to speak of, and transportation was expensive, confectioners often used local ingredients. If you lived in a region that produced cherries or walnuts, chances are those were in your candy bars.
Regional candies are a dying breed. Today, there are perhaps a dozen such concerns left in America. The rest have been swallowed up, or put out of business, by the massive consolidation that has shaped the modern confectionery industry. Earlier this month, the British chocolate giant Cadbury agreed to a $19 billion buyout from Kraft, creating a mega-firm that projects $50 billion in annual sales.
Thousands of candy bars have disappeared along the road to consolidation, including such recent delicacies as the peanut butter-and-chocolate pods known as Oompahs, the treacherously chewy Bit-o-Choc, the glorious, nougat-and-caramel-filled Milkshake, and the Bar None, an ingenious marriage of peanuts and wafers dipped in chocolate. Also gone (but not forgotten) is the curiously alluring Marathon Bar, a braided rope of chocolate and caramel whose wrapper featured a ruler on the back.
Local products ranged from legendary to outright strange. There was the famous Seven Up, a St. Paul native that included seven different flavors; the nougat-puffed Minneapolis bar known as the Fat Emma and a creation known as the Vegetable Sandwich, which, regrettably, consisted of dehydrated cabbage, celery and peppers covered in chocolate. (The Vegetable Sandwich, whose label contained the bizarre boast "Will Not Constipate," was introduced during the health craze of the '20s and died, of natural causes, soon after.) Other bars included the Dipsy Doodle, the Coffee Dan, the Baby Lobster, the Prairie Schooner, the Fig Pie—the list goes on and on.
Still, a handful of candy makers have resisted the corporate scythe and persevered. At Palmer Candy in Sioux City, Iowa, fleets of workers with ice cream scoops plop a lump of chocolate-and-peanut hash around a cherry fondant to produce the unexpectedly addictive Twin Bing.
Marty Palmer, the fifth generation of Palmers to run the company, has a framed calfskin pennant behind his desk, branded with the legend "Delicious Chocolates Sold Here." It dates back to the turn of the century. "Back then, we delivered our candies as far as a horse-drawn wagon could go in a day," Mr. Palmer said. "That was our distribution system. Our jobbers would go in to a dry goods store and peg one of these to the wall."
The Idaho Candy Company in Boise looks more like a museum than a production facility, littered with equipment dating back to the 1900s. It's home to the Idaho Spud, a spongy, cocoa-flavored marshmallow covered in dark chocolate and dusted with dried coconut. It is, shall we say, an acquired taste.
All of these companies are acutely aware of how tenuous their businesses are. The consolidation of retail outlets has destroyed the network of mom-and-pop grocery stores that sold their products. And the giant chains that dominated the retail landscape, such as Wal-Mart, charge so-called "slotting fees"—a fee paid by the supplier for desirable shelf space—that are often prohibitive.
There's no danger of the small manufacturers being bought out by one of the Big Three—Hershey, Mars and Nestle—because the profits generated by their bars simply aren't big enough. Their most loyal customers—the folks who had grown up eating their bars—are getting older. And they fret that their companies will eventually have to be shuttered, unless one of their children takes over.
The diminishing presence of certain brands has created a whole new niche business for Web sites like Candydirect.com, a retailer of hard-to-find candies. The site's message board is a testament to the fanaticism of candy lovers, all desperately seeking some candy from their youth, which they describe in detail. Here, you'll find elegies to dear departed goodies such as Wacky Wafers, the Summit bar, the PB Max, Choco-Lite and the Reggie Bar.
The era of the local candy factory dates back to an ambitious Pennsylvanian named Milton Hershey, a failed vendor of caramels, who recognized in the 1890s that chocolate bars were going to make someone a lot of money. Up until this point, most confectioners were local, storefront operations. The candy was cooked up in back, and sold in front. Hershey mass-produced his bars and chocolate "kisses" and sold them in grocery stores and pushcarts.
Others followed suit. Before long, America's major cities had their own candy factories, to go along with the local breweries and bakeries. Boston—for a time the nation's capital of candy production—boasted an entire street dubbed "Confectioner's Row," along with half a dozen chocolate factories. On days when the breeze was blowing right, you could smell chocolate for miles.
The Great Depression ushered in a golden age of candy bars. Back then, they were referred to as "nickel bars" and marketed as a cheap source of quick calories. This gave rise to bars such as the Club Sandwich and the infamous Chicken Dinner which featured a roasted chicken on its label (though, alas, no actual chicken in the bar).
The late Ray Broekel, author of the "Great American Candy Bar Book" and as close as America comes to an official candy historian, estimated that, in the years between the World Wars, 30,000 different brands were introduced in the United States alone.
It was this very glut that compelled the shrewdest minds in the industry to focus on building brand names and expanding market share. Hershey and his chief competitor Forrest Mars set about automating factories, establishing a national distribution system, stockpiling ingredients, buying up competitors and advertising.
Over the past 70 years, the so-called Big Three have bought out virtually every competitor of any significance. They have also set their sights on emerging markets in the developing world. The Kraft purchase of Cadbury makes it, in essence, a Big Fourth.
The consolidation has left behind some beloved confections. Consider the Caravelle, made by Peter Paul. The Caravelle was a sublime marriage of soft caramel and crisped rice, enrobed in a thick shell of milk chocolate. Imagine a 100 Grand bar—only 100 times better.
Then the Caravelle disappeared. It was discontinued after Peter Paul merged with Cadbury Schweppes in 1978. A decade later, Hershey purchased Peter Paul. The only Peter Paul bars that survive today are the two most profitable, Mounds and Almond Joy.
While it's true that most regional companies have gone the way of the dinosaurs, the tradition lives on in places like Hayward, Calif. That's where Susan Karl, president of Annabelle Candy, oversees the production of the Rocky Road, a gooey chocolate-and-marshmallow confection first made by her grandfather, Sam Altshuler, a Russian immigrant who founded the company 60 years ago.
One of the nation's oldest confectioners, the New England Confectionery Company, is still around, too. Necco is under different ownership these days, and the operation has moved to a new factory outside Boston, but it still produces its eponymous wafers, along with other beloved old brands such as Mary Janes, Clark Bars and the Sky Bar.
—Steve Almond is the author of "Candyfreak" and the forthcoming "Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life."
