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Hey, and welcome to The Shortstuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here, too, and Dave's here in Spirit, which is appropriate because this is a Halloween-themed episode of Shortstuff. Is it not, Chuck?

It's spoopy.

Spoopy?

Spoopy.

Is that what you said for real?

Yeah. Are you going to do this bit every year?

I don't remember you saying it. So yes, as long as I forget the next day, yes, every year I'm going to do this.

Spoopy. S-p-o-o-p-y is a lighthearted, spooky.

Okay. Is that your own trademark slogan?

No. Look it up.

Okay, I will look it up. Actually, I'll forget all about it and won't look it up. Then next year, I'll agree to look it.

Up again. We should all pause, let you look it up.

Okay.

Since this is short stuff, we'll just let the tape roll All right.

Oh, look, there it is. Yep, you're right, spoopy. No, I.

Didn't make it up. It's a thing.

Okay. You know what else is a thing, Chuck? Candy corn. Candy corn. That's right. It is a thing. It's one of the most divisive candies. It's probably the most divisive holiday candy of all time.

Where do you land?

Oh, I don't like it at all.

Okay.

Do you like it?

I mean, there's a bit of a nostalgia play. I definitely can't say that I think it's like, Oh, boy, this tastes great. I can't wait to eat it.

But.

If someone throws a candy corn in my mouth and I happen to be chewing, I'll be like, Oh, that old memory. But I don't go, Puh, puh.

I got you. We need to get one of those house divided license plates.

Right, sure.

So candy corn is actually super old. We know it's at least coming up on 150 years old. They think it came out in the 1880s. And by the way, thanks big time to history. Com, Better Homes and Gardens, alwaysatreat.

Com.

Mbhenry. Com, and candystore. Com. A lot of dot coms in there. But one of the things about candy corn is its origins are murky, so people just generally say, Yeah, this guy is the inventor.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Are we going to that guy?

No, let's talk about where it came from originally, we think.

Yeah, because previous to the actual corn, they were making these kinds of candies. That's not to say the ones that were shaped that way and colored that way, but we're talking about mellow cream.

Yeah. You know those candy pumpkins?

Yeah, that's.

Mellow cream, right? Exactly. That, to me, is quintessential mellow cream even more than candy corn.

Yeah. Apparently, they used to make all sorts of phony vegetables made out of that junk because Americans were still farming. If you had a little seven-year-old, you could be like, You got to work in the field all day. When you come home, you're going to get this mellow cream asparagas tip.

Or mellow cream Bach-choy.

Yeah, boy.

You would think these little kids who were being forced into child labor, the last thing they would want to see in their candy were agricultural products, but apparently that's all they had to choose from. The other thing to know about this, this context that candy corn emerged from, is that these candies were available year-round. And the thing that made candy corn stand out among its peers is that it had three colors, technically two colors and the presence of all color.

Yeah, I like that. I like the way you put it.

Let's talk about the guy who actually is credited with inventing this. Probably is, who cares at this point? He's been credited for so long, it doesn't really matter.

Yeah. He's from Philadelphia, and they like to take credit for everything. We're talking about George Reninger is how I would pronounce it. Me too. Or Reninger, maybe. He worked at the Wonderly candy company in Philly, the brotherly Love City.

The reason why he's credited is that he was an employee there, and they are known to be the first company to start producing these. I guess he was a candy designer there. Wonderly candy company was the first to put these out. They were out for a little while. Like I said, they were available year round, all of these things were, and they weren't associated with Halloween. You could find them at just about any celebration where they had candy treats.

But the thing to know about them is they were... You know candy cigarettes or little candy people that you eat or candy things that look like other stuff? That's what candy corn was originally meant to be. Of course, candy corn, it's in the name, but we think of it today as like little kernel of corn that you would eat. It was originally marketed as candy corn in the sense that corn was chicken feed. So this was basically candy chicken feed is how candy corn started out.

Yeah, because apparently, and this is something I didn't know, this to me is the fact of the show, is that including a little bit after World War I, but previous to that and a few years after, apparently corn was like a... It's not a vegetable, it's a starch, right?

Yes.

It was a garbage starch. It wasn't on the plates of most Americans, and you had to have been really hard up for food, apparently, to eat corn as a human. It was just for chickens.

Exactly. This is what kids were eating. They would go to the store and get a box of chicken feed from the Golet's candy company. This is the company that really exposed candy corn to the world.

I love corn. Do you like corn?

Yeah, I like corn on the cob. For some reason, once you take it off the cob, I think it's disgusting.

Oh, even in a dish like elote or a salad or something?

It depends. It really depends on the dish. But if it's canned, I mean, oh God, I can barely talk about it.

You know the old story of when I was missing that front tooth and I would eat corn and there would be little rows of uneatable corn every two inches.

That was a Mad magazine cover, too.

I think it was.

So candy corn is out there. The genie is out of the bottle, as they say. Kids are eating this candy chicken feed. But then by the mid 20th century, people ate corn normally. And by the mid 20th century, Halloween was very much associated with candy. I think around this time is when candy corn really became linked to Halloween. It would be weird to see candy corn at Easter, but that's how it used to be, friends.

Yeah, but now it's linked starting in the mid 20th century, like you said, to Halloween. And we will take a break, yeah?

Yeah.

And we'll talk about how you make this stuff right after this.

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All right, you went to that website, alwaysatreat. Com, and they had a pretty good story there about how they used to manufacture this. And it's not a whole lot different than they do it today. Obviously, it's automated today. But back then, you would get a bunch of dudes, and they would get sugar and corn syrup and some other magical ingredients, and they would cook it in these big kettles and boil it all up. They would add a little Marshmello, maybe a little fondant to smooth it out a little bit. And 45 pounds at a time, they would make this warm slurry, and they would pour it into buckets called runners. And then these guys called stringers would walk backwards down a line and pour this candy into these little molds, these little trays in that classic iconic kernel shape.

Yeah, and the trays were made of corn starch, and it would take three passes. For some reason, I don't understand why the stringers, the guys pouring the candy corn slurry into the mold would walk backwards. Do you?

No, I don't. I was trying to think it might be easier to pour. I mean, it probably had something to do with the setup.

I could understand if you're left-handed, you're walking backwards. But if you're right-handed, yeah, I think right-handed, you'd be walking backwards if the thing was on your left. There's no explanation I can find for why they would walk backwards.

Well, they are from Philly, so maybe they were just like, We're candy corn stringers. We walk backwards.

Yeah, probably. You never know. That answer is as good as any. But the whole thing is that we take three passes because they would put the white in, then the yellow, and then the orange. That's how it was originally made. Basically, nothing has changed, except like you said, it's become automated. They use essentially the same ingredients, which are you ready for this? It's, like you said, made with sugar. It's made with fondant, which is sugar, water, and corn syrup. It's made with corn syrup, which is a whole bunch of different sugars, mostly glucose, vanilla flavoring, and Marshmello cream, which is made from corn syrup, sugar, water, and eggs. There's a lot of sugar in these things. And they melt them into a slurry, all those ingredients, and they pour them into corn starch molds just like they did 100-something years ago.

Yeah, boom, boom, boom. They just layer up the colors just like that. And this is according to the National Confectioners Association, the NCA says, 35 million pounds of this stuff, which amounts to nine billion pieces of candy corn, are produced annually in modern times.

Yes. And keeping tradition, they make the machines work backward for some reason when they're pouring the slurry.

That's right. And are we done? Of course not, because somehow you found actual survey statistics on how popular this stuff was.

Yeah, because there's a thing. It's been around for almost 150 years for a reason. The reason is there are some people out there who actually like candy corn.

Yeah.

I know it's weird. It's a weird thing to say, but it's true. Much so that the National Retail Federation, a font of statistics that have to do with shopping, purchasing, and consumerism in general, said that in 2019, 95% of people who shopped for Halloween stuff bought candy corn. 95%.

I'm not one of them.

I wasn't either. We're in that weird 5%. But I can't believe it. The thing is, I don't think all those people are eating candy corn necessarily.

No. It turns out if you go on to crafty websites, there are all kinds of fun little crafts you can do with candy corn because the color itself lends itself to fall feelings and fall crafts. So you can do all kinds of stuff. Basically, you can hot glue it on whatever you want to.

Basically, yeah, I saw a cute one. I can't remember where, but if you spik a pumpkin, you can make a little candy corn pumpkin hedgehog.

Oh, that's cute.

It's adorable. Okay, so I found some more stats, too, Chuck.

All right, let's hear it. Oh, I don't know, where is it popular?

Yeah, candystore. Com looked over 16 years of their shipping data- That's amazing. -to identify the top three favorite candies for each state. And candy corn was in the top three. It was not the first for any state, but it was in the top three for a bunch of different states, from South Carolina to Maine to North Dakota to Michigan to New York. And then nationwide, it was number eight.

That's amazing. And we should thank Leslie, the temp at candystore. Com that month who they tasked with.

Doing this. You're right, for sure. Poor Leslie.

Yeah, poor Leslie. That's all right. It probably wouldn't have a bad job. All right, they also did a poll, and I think Leslie was in charge of this, too, because did they pull 3,000 people?

3,247.

Did they pull 3,500?

No.

I guess they pulled everyone that they had their email contact for, which was, like you said, 3,247. And they said that, Do you like it? Do you hate it? Why? And nostalgia, which is what I mentioned, that was one of the big reasons why people get this stuff. It's something they had when they were a kid that they might have liked the taste of when they were a kid. And then as adults, they'll say, Well, I got to be in that fall spirit and let's grab a bag. Yeah.

And then, sweetness was another one for people who like candy corn. And then, conversely, sweetnessness was a big reason people don't like candy corn. One of the respondents said it was like biting into a sugar cube, and that's pretty close to accurate. There's also the waxy texture that puts some people off, including me.

I actually don't mind that part. I'll tell you what, though, I haven't had one in years, but it's an unforgettable flavor.

Yeah, I have had it. I can bring that flavor to mind, too. I don't want it again, essentially.

Yeah, I'm with you.

Overall, though, out of that 3,247 Americans, they pulled 56 % were fans and 44 % were not. There are more people, at least according to that poll, who like candy corn than don't.

That's right. If you thought it couldn't get any better, everybody, Leslie drilled down even further and found out how people eat them. 51 % just pop it in their mouth and crunch it like it's a piece of popcorn. Normal. 16 % start with the widest bit, which is the yellow bit, and then 33 % conversely, flip it over and start at that little smaller white end, which is amazing to me that someone actually takes that tiny of a bite of something that small.

Yeah, some people like that tiny little white part. As if it taste any different? Right, it definitely does not. It shouldn't. No. If it does, you might want to take it back to the store because there's something wrong with the canicorn.

Yeah, this white part tastes good.

You got anything else?

I got.

Nothing else. Well, we're getting close to Halloween, everybody, which means short stuff is out.

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