Snack Break: The Stories Behind Your Favorite Movie Theater Candy
For me, part of the fun of going out to the movies is getting to enjoy some guilt-free junk food. There’s just something about watching an action-packed blockbuster with a tub of popcorn and some Junior Mints. The next time you’re sitting at the theater waiting for the show to start, you can share these bite-sized tidbits with your date. Hey, it might be better entertainment than the previews!
Milk Duds . It kind of sounds like something Linda Richman would say on : “Milk Duds. They’re neither Milk, nor Duds. Discuss.” But the fact is, they’re both. The “Milk” comes from the high amount of milk used in the product when it was created in 1926, and “Dud” comes from the fact that the candies were meant to be perfectly round, similar to a malted milk ball. Rather than spend copious amounts of money and effort trying to get the candies more spherical, Hershey’s opted to call it a “Dud” instead and simply market it that way. And although there’s still milk in the product, there’s a bit less of it in the past few years since Hershey started using vegetable oil in some products to replicate the expensive cocoa butter used in milk chocolate. , a show that was all the rage on Broadway at the time. These days, I’d say the namesake confection is much more well-known than the play, even though it eventually became a radio show starring Shirley Temple. Robert Welch, the inventor of the Junior Mint, also created the Sugar Daddy and Sugar Babies. I have nothing against Sugar Babies, but the Junior Mint is far superior, at least when it comes to pop culture: you can find references to the dark chocolate round in (Image credit: Flickr user dklimke )
Sno-Caps, Goobers and Raisinets. The Blumenthal Brother Chocolate Company of Philadelphia really knew how to make good movie theater candy. Goobers – chocolate-covered peanuts – came first in 1925. The success of taking a simple product and dunking it in milk chocolate inspired them to give raisins a shot, and thus Raisinets were born in 1927. Finally, sometime in the late ’20s, Sno-Caps followed under the name “Bob Whites.” The Blumenthal Brother Chocolate Company has long since disbanded – Sno-Caps, Goobers and Raisinets were all acquired by Nestle in 1984 – but their sugary legacy lives on. Bizarrely, magazine noted that “All the Blumenthals are excellent pinochle players,” so I guess they had that to fall back on if the whole candy thing didn’t work out.
Red Vines. I think most licorice lovers can be divided into two categories: those who love Red Vines and those who love Twizzlers. The American Licorice Company introduced Black Licorice Vines in 1914, and those did well enough that they were able to branch out into Raspberry Vines in 1920. They were renamed “Red Vines” in 1952. Despite being around for as long as Elizabeth II has ruled, Red Vines’ first television ad didn’t air until 2008. More fun trivia from the American Licorice Company: they created a licorice shoe for Charlie Chaplin to carve up for a meal in the 1925 movie (Image credit: Flickr user Incase .)
