A few Halloweens ago, Erica Maley, owner of an online retailer of old-fashioned candy, saw a spike in sales of wax lips. She couldn’t figure out why so many people were ordering just a single pair of the puffy red edible lips. Then it clicked. Octomom was in the news and a lot of people were turning the controversial mom of 14 children (including octuplets) into a homemade Halloween costume.
Even when they are not getting creative with costumes, consumers have a soft spot for candies from eras past. At nostalgiccandy.com, Halloween is only the third biggest holiday in terms of sales, trumped by Easter and Christmas, Maley said.
Cigarettes and cigars made of candy, gum or chocolate top the list of most wanted items, followed by wax lips, flying saucer or satellite wafers, candy buttons and those fruit syrup-filled wax bottles called Nik L Nip, all of which were created in the early to mid-20th century. According to Yahoo, among Atlantans’ nostalgic candy brands, Necco Wafers, Good & Plenty, Bit O’ Honey, Razzles ... and yes, wax lips, topped the list.
Though many of the nostalgic brands are now under the umbrella of major candy makers such as Tootsie Roll Industries (Sugar Daddy, Nik L Nip, Razzles and Charleston Chew to name a few) and Nestle (Oh Henry, Lik M Aid Fun Dip and Pixy Stix), many brands remain the product of small operations.
The big candy makers, “are quick to walk away from heritage brands or older brands. They want to focus on the big hit with international selling power,” said Cabot Orton, co-owner of Vermont Country Store. “Typically it is smaller independent producers who go to great pains to bring back some of these great products.”
Vermont Country Store, founded by Orton’s grandparents, has two retail stores in Vermont in addition to a catalog and online business. The company has been a well-known provider of nostalgic candy since opening in 1946 and sometimes spends years working with producers interested in resurrecting heritage brands.
It may seem a simple thing to make or recreate candy, Orton said, but the process is really complex. Even if you can locate and obtain rights to the original ingredients, some of the products were created with special machinery. “It is not something you can do as a start-up,” he said.
The candy buyer at Vermont Country Store searches far and wide for nostalgic brands, finding items on the shelves of small grocery stores, in wholesalers’ warehouses and around the world. Walnettos, for example, currently sold at Vermont Country Store, were introduced in 1919, retired in the 1960s, and brought back in 1984. And Bonamo Turkish Taffy, another Vermont Country Store favorite created in 1912, went through several periods of reintroduction and reformulation until its ultimate recreation in 2002 using the original formula from the 1940s and 1970s.
While some nostalgic brands may have different formulations, Orton said some ingredients such as corn syrup, which has gotten bad press in recent years, were often part of the original recipes. “We see some of them doing what they always did and people think it is somehow adulterated,” Orton said.
Nostalgic candy has broad cross-generational appeal, he said, though older people are more apt to wax poetic about wax lips. Still, the longevity of the old-fashioned sweets can be attributed to more than just heartwarming memories. Unlike the often intense sours and complicated flavors of candy today, many nostalgic brands were both simple and delicious. “I don’t think people would look for it and continue to buy it if it wasn’t really good candy,” Orton said. “There are people who probably think [nostalgic candies] are higher quality than the candy you find out there today.”
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