Cracker Jack

A German immigrant named Frederick William Rueckheim invented Cracker Jack. Rueckheim came to Chicago in 1872 to help clean up after the famous Chicago fire. He also worked selling popcorn from a cart. Together with brother Louis, Rueckheim experimented and came up with a delightful popcorn candy, which the brothers decided to mass market. Cracker Jack was first mass-produced and sold at the first Chicago World's Fair in 1893. (The Ferris Wheel, Aunt Jemima pancakes, and the ice cream cone were also introduced at the event.)

The treat was a mixture of popcorn, molasses, and peanuts and the initial name was "Candied Popcorn and Peanuts." Legend has it that the name "Cracker Jack" came from a customer who upon trying the treat exclaimed "That really a cracker - Jack!"  and the name stuck. However, "crackerjack" was also a slang expression at that time that meant "something very pleasing or excellent" and that is more likely to have been the origin of the name. By 1896, the company devised a way to keep the popcorn kernels separate, the mixture had been difficult to handle because it tended to stick together in chunks. The wax-sealed, moisture-proof box was introduced in 1899. Immortalized in 1908 in the lyrics of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," Cracker Jack added surprises in each package in 1912.

Cotton Candy

      Cotton candy is a popular food at carnivals, amusement parks, fairgrounds or circuses. Its fibrous texture makes it unique among sugar confectioneries. Sugar confectioneries have been made for thousands of years, but the invention of cotton candy is a relatively recent event. Sweet gold rings which resembled molten glass in appearance, the predecessor to cotton candy, were developed by European chefs. They were sticky and could be made in many shapes. Cotton candy was introduced when the sugar industry advanced. The first electrical cotton candy machine was invented in 1897 by William Morrison and John C. Wharton, candy maker from Nashville and they presented cotton candy to a wide audience at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair as Fairy Floss with great success, selling 68.655 boxes at the then-high 25$, which was half of the cost of admission to the fair. They obtained a patent to protect this machine. A year later, fairy floss machines were being sold to candy stores. Since the invention of modern day cotton candy, very little has changed with regards to this device. It operated much like cotton candy machines today by heating the sugar to a liquid state and push the liquid through a screen to create the strands of sugar. There have been improvements in the design of machine and to increase reliability, because early cotton candy machines rattled and broke down constantly, but the concept remained the same. In the 1920s fairy floss was renamed to cotton candy.

     In 1900, Thomas Patton received a separate patent for his work with caramelized sugar and forming long threads of it with a fork. He later used a gas-fired rotating plate to spin the threads. In 1949, Gold Metal Products of Cincinnati, Ohio introduced a cotton candy machine with a spring base that helped tremendously. Today, it manufactures almost all cotton candy machines. Due to the lack of automated machines that could produce enough products for widespread distribution prior to the 1970s, cotton candy was only produced on a small scale. Then, in 1972, a cotton candy machine for automatic manufacture and packaging was patented. It allowed the mass production of cotton candy. Tootsie Roll of Canada Ltd., the world's largest cotton-candy manufacturer, makes a fluffy stuff, fruit-flavored version of cotton candy. Today, cotton candy is available in many different flavors including banana, raspberry, vanilla, watermelon, and chocolate. Both artificial and natural flavors may be used for the production of these flavors. The National Cotton Candy Day is a day dedicated to cotton candy in the United States which is celebrated on December 7.

Candy Cane

Around the seventeenth century, European-Christians began to adopt the use of Christmas trees as part of their Christmas celebrations. They made special decorations for their trees from foods like cookies and sugar-stick candy. The first historical reference to the familiar cane shape goes back to 1670, when the choirmaster at the Cologne Cathedral in Germany, bent the sugar-sticks into canes to represent a shepherd's staff. The all-white candy canes were given out to children during the long-winded nativity services.
The clergymen's custom of handing out candy canes during Christmas services spread throughout Europe and later to America. The canes were still white, but sometimes the candy-makers would add sugar-roses to decorate the canes further. The first historical reference to the candy cane being in America goes back to 1847, when a German immigrant called August Imgard decorated the Christmas tree in his Wooster, Ohio home with candy canes.
The Stripes
About fifty years later the first red-and-white striped candy canes appeared. No one knows who exactly invented the stripes, but Christmas cards prior to the year 1900 showed only all-white candy canes. Christmas cards after 1900 showed illustrations of striped candy canes. Around the same time, candy-makers added peppermint and wintergreen flavors to their candy canes and those flavors then became the traditional favorites.
Sweet Secrets of the Candy Cane
There are many other legends and beliefs surrounding the humble candy cane. Many of them depict the candy cane as a secret symbol for Christianity used during the times when Christian were living under more oppressive circumstances. It was said that the cane was shaped like a "J" for Jesus. The red-and-white stripes represented Christ's blood and purity. The three red stripes symbolized the Holy Trinity. The hardness of the candy represented the Church's foundation on solid rock and the peppermint flavor represented the use of hyssop, an herb referred to in the Old Testament. There is no historical evidence to support these claims, quite the contrary, but they are lovely thoughts.

Dum Dum Sucker

Akron Candy Company invented these sugary treats in 1924. Back then, the original flavors were Lemon, Lime, Orange, Coconut-Pineapple, Cherry, Grape, and Butterscotch. Over the years, a number of flavors rotated in and out. But it wasn't until 1995 Blue Raspberry was added to the mix. I.C. Bahr, the Sales Manager at Akron Candy Company reportedly chose to call them Dum Dums since it was easy for children to say. Current flavors include Blue Raspberry, Cream Soda, Watermelon, Root Beer, Sour Apple, Cotton Candy, Butterscotch, Cherry, Strawberry, Bubble Gum, Grape, Blueberry, Raspberry, Lemonade, Peach-Mango, Orange, Fruit Punch, and Mystery Flavor.

Charms Blow Pops

      According to the Charms Division of Tootsie Roll Industries, the Charms Candy Co. was founded in 1912 by Walter Reid Jr. as “Tropical Charms,” which were the square-shaped fruit-flavored hard candies he manufactured, among the first candies to be individually wrapped in cellophane. Located on Bloomfield Avenue, the company, now known as Charms Candy, had its products included in U.S. Army combat rations during World War II, a tradition that continues to the present with the candies included in military Meals Ready to Eat (MREs). Following World War II, Charms faced difficult times due to both the instability of the post-war sugar market and the growing popularity of other hard candies, including Lifesavers. Walter Reid III, the son of the company’s founder, returned from active service and took charge of the company; he was running Charms when Blow Pops — lollipops with a bubble-gum center — were invented in the early 1970s. Blow Pops became the company’s best-selling product of all time.

Laffy Taffy

Laffy Taffy is one of the most popular brands of toffee among the children of America. You can get this brand in numerous fruit flavors and colors, and the toffees are packed in many different ways. People call it toffee outside America, where it is called candy. Taffy is nothing but a mixture of sugar and butter. These are boiled together until they become completely sticky. At this stage, they are given various shapes. The Taffy at this stage must be in a form that can be stretched well. No one actually has any idea about the origin of the toffee or taffy. The first time its name was reflected in the English Oxford dictionary in the year 1817. Some people speculate that it was first made in England, some in Scotland, and few believe that it may have come from France. Some even say that since the butter and sugar were quite frequently used by the Romans in the medieval period, therefore it could have emerged out from Roman period. Also, during the Robbie Burn times, the traditional hard toffee was quite famous amongst people of Scotland. In Scotland, the toffee is considered to be very hard that cannot be chewed with teeth, and hence, the toffee were sold as tablets along with a tiny metal hammer that was used to break them into smaller pieces. The soft variety of Taffy that could be chewed became quite famous during 1800. In those times, these were sold as ordinary candies, which could be stored with ease on shelves of candy stores by wrapping them with wax paper. In the early part of 1800, people used to organize social events that included preparation of Taffy which extended throughout the U.S.

Tootise Roll

In 1896 Austrian immigrant Leo Hirshfield brings to the U.S. his recipe for a chocolaty, chewy candy, which he begins producing in a small store in New York City.Hirshfield names the candy after his five-year-old daughter, whose nickname is "Tootsie."

View- Master History

We owe our love of handheld three-dimensional color slides to a photographer with a wild idea. In 1938, cameraman William Gruber was taking photographs of the Oregon Caves National Monument through two cameras strapped together. The idea? To produce new 3-D color slides for stereoscopes common in most 19th century drawing rooms. A chance encounter at the caves with Harold Graves, president of Sawyer's Photographic Services, led the two to strike a deal. Together, they would produce the View-Master, a new way of viewing tourist attractions in America. The famous red device made its big debut at the 1939 New York World's Fair and was sold through specialty photography stores until Graves and Gruber scored a major licensing agreement with Disney to offer 3-D images of Disney films, TV shows and theme parks. From that point on , the View-Master became a beloved classic.

Army Men History

In 1938, the Bergen Toy and Novelty Co. began selling an inexpensive line of minuscule, monochrome plastic soldiers. The 2-in. American figures were produced in U.S. Army green and molded in a variety of action poses — a little boy's war fantasy come true. Sold in large plastic bags, demand for the little green men rose in the 1950s thanks to a boom in plastics manufacturing and a lead-poisoning scare that made the metal versions less appealing. Soon the company was manufacturing enemy forces too: German troops were molded in grey, Japanese forces in yellow. Though the little warriors have undergone several changes over the years, their most famous identity is as World War II–era soldiers with "pod feet" attached to keep them standing during battle.

Slinky History

"A spring, a spring, a marvelous thing! Everyone knows it's Slinky!" Though its popularity can't be called into question, "everyone" may not know that the Slinky was an accident. Created by mechanical engineer Richard James in 1943, it was the unintended by-product of a new line of sensitive springs that would help keep fragile equipment steady on ships. After knocking one of his newly created springs from a shelf, James watched as it "walked" down from its spot instead of falling to the ground. With a machine designed to coil 80 ft. of wire into a 2-in. spiral and a name chosen by his wife Betty, James began producing his novelty Slinky — but at first to little notice. Slinky got its big break during the Christmas shopping season of 1945, when the Gimbels department store in Philadelphia let James demonstrate his new creation. Within minutes, he sold 400 Slinkys. Sixty-six years and 250 million Slinkys later, we're still just as delighted with James' serendipitous toy as we ever were.