Here we go; the seasons roll onward and the next seasonal favorite to approach is Autumn and Halloween! Spotted on the store shelves today for the first time is that old Halloween standby, candy corn. Lore has it that candy corn was invented in the 1880s by a Wunderlee Candy Company employee named George Renninger. Wunderlee was reportedly the first to produce the candy, followed by the Goelitz Candy Company (now the Jelly Belly Candy Company), which has been producing the tri-colored candies since 1898. Back then, the cooking process was done by hand: a sugar and corn syrup-based mixture was cooked into a slurry (a semi-liquid mixture) in a large kettle, dumped into buckets called runners, and men dubbed stringers walked backwards, pouring the hot concoction into a tray of molds in the shape of corn kernels.
Candy corn has been primarily associated with autumn because of corn’s link to the fall harvest, and it seemed to become a Halloween standard in the 1950s when people started handing out individually-wrapped candy to trick-or-treaters, according to The Atlantic‘s series on the history of Halloween candy. That said, candy corn was also nicknamed “chicken feed” in the 1920s and sold in a box with a rooster on the front, not to mention a 1951 advertisement called it great to eat all year round, the magazine points out.
Thank you for providing us this story of candy corn. This has always been one of my favorites to eat during fall. There is so much automation today in factories that we don't think about how things were made back in the old days. I can just vision the stringers walking backwards pouring the hot syrup into the molds. Could you imagine having that job. We are so blessed to have writers like you reminding us of the olden days. Thank you so very much.
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