Hey, and welcome to the short stuff, I'm Josh and there's Chuck, and this is Necco Wafers short stuff on Necco Wafers, the wafers from Necco.

Go ahead and ask your question. Chuck Uh huh? Have you ever thought about. Pudding and Necco wafers in your mouth. Oh, boy, that was good, good drama. You know, I've never had one of these. I haven't either.

I've got my whole life. Really? Oh, yeah. No, no can. We pledged to never have them or now do you want to.

I don't know. It's it could go either way. That's a really good, good question. Like OK, like I could, I could see going your whole lot like getting that engraved on your tombstone like. Yeah. It never had a Necco wafers.

So what we're talking about is a candy, um, it's referenced pretty prominently in some movie in a line and I could not think of what it was which really bugged me. But that's sort of where I even heard of Necco Wafers was, I think just through pop culture. It's not something not only have I not had one, I don't know anyone who's ever had one. Like, I've never been with someone who was just chowing on Necco Wafers or had a family member that was a Necco enthusiast.

No, it's a it's typically and I don't mean to be ageist, but it's typically viewed as kind of like a grandma Candy.

You know, where like saltwater taffy, even though I know you love that.

Oh, dude, it's so good. Saltwater taffy is just so good when it's done.

Right.

I'm not arguing that. I'm just saying it's a bit of a grandma candy. Only love for sure. I'm with you or our grandma is God rest her soul.

Exactly right. But no, it has this kind of that whole Dailly kinda aura around it, you know what I'm saying?

Sure. You got a I think when you buy Necco Wafers, it comes with the Doyley. It does. You just unroll the wax packaging. So if you've not seen this, you probably have.

If you don't know what we're talking about, you probably have seen it.

It's like it comes in like a kind of a wax paper roll tube. Yeah. Tube. And then the wafers themselves are a little bigger than the size of a quarter maybe. And they're dusty. Chalky. Yeah. Weirdly colored too. The colors are brown and gray.

Not indicate they're like no not at all.

But like chocolate, multicolored role of of this chalky dusty multi flavored candy that they're not complementary flavors either. It's a mess. Necco Wafers are a mess. I'm just going to say there are a hundred and seventy year old mess. Yeah.

I guess we'll just go ahead and mention those flavors. You've got the lemon yellows, the lime greens, the orange, orange, light purple is clove. Do you not ever get one of those near my mouth. OK, cinnamon is white. A little weird. Wintergreen is pink. We are also weird. Licorice is dark gray, right, and then there is a chocolate flavor which is brown, and I guarantee you it does not taste like chocolate.

No. And I was like, like, you can look at Necco Wafers and be like, I know what that's going to taste like and I'm not going to like it. Yeah, I agree.

But you and I have had basically Necco Wafers because the Necco company, we should say the name is kind of an acronym. It stands for New England Candy Company, right? Mm hmm. They also are the makers of Conversation Haaz. You know, that's a little hard to say, be mine, I'm yours. Those are certainly shaped Necco Wafers. It's the same exact thing. So those things, when you've tried them before and been like these are absolutely horrible.

You would think the same thing about Necco Wafers.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. So it's just it's Necco Wafers, just a thinner sort of coin like version of those. Yes.

That don't say something like be mine or I'm yours.

Apparently the ones these days say email me or or grab a glass of water. Right.

This is going to is going to be terrible. All right. Let's take a break here. We'll talk a little bit more about where they started and why they're still around right after this.

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All right, let's see if we get back in the Wayback Machine and went back to 1981, we would see Necco Wafers being cranked out from the New England Candy Company, even though apparently they were around since 1847. I didn't quite get that.

Yeah. One of the one of the co-founders of New England Candy Company invented this lozenge machine, the machine that basically popped out these little wafers. And one of the first things they did was use it to make Necco Wafers. So Necco Wafers actually predate Necco itself, be called hub wafers. And Hubb was like an old timey name, like slang term for Boston. So they were Boston wafers originally, but they predate the company that made them famous and they predate virtually every popular candy that we know of.

And. I think Hershey Bar officially came out one year prior, but every other sort of candy bar that, you know, love came around the 1920s and 30s as far as the classics go. Right. Eminem's in the 1940s, but the Necco Wafer in 1911, they pack it in soldiers rations in the civil war, which would should be your first like, stay far away from this Candy and 20, 21 sort of warning. Like if they put it in civil war rations, you probably going to be eating it today also.

So that's debatable whether it actually was in the civil war. Like, that's a long standing thing that Netco has been saying for a while. But I think some historians have looked into it like, no, I'm not 100 percent sure about that. But it definitely was in the rations of American soldiers in World War Two because the government actually took over the Necco factory in requisitioned like a sizable portion of their production to to give to soldiers because they don't melt.

They're really portable. And it's like a high calorie dense snack. Yeah, and the civil war was over in 1865, so it had to have just been that first version that whatever they were called, the hub, the hub ones.

Yeah, yeah.

So at any rate, they're made from sugar and corn syrup. They're like he said, super chalky. And if you if you take a survey or see a survey, even online for Candie's, it's usually kind of right at the bottom. I feel bad because we're doing nothing but bagging on this classic and on people love them really.

From what I've seen from one of the company's spokespeople. Yes, some people love them. Get a sweetheart if you want something like that or a spree sprees or even better spree, what is a spree?

Oh, it's like the shiny, shiny, slicker version of sweethearts. It's not at all powdery.

It's got a slick, shiny coating and it's superior in taste as well.

And now really love those really. They were like game pieces. Yes, they did.

So it was a lot more fun to eat them because you'd be like, I'm not supposed to be in this, I'm supposed to be playing and it's I'm going to eat it.

Well, and that's a nice transition, actually, because as far as Necco Wafers go, people sometimes buy them and use them for kids to train them on communion, edible poker chips, shingles for gingerbread houses. It's a nice application. Yes. Or place markers.

So there is actual evidence that some people do enjoy the taste of them because the current company that owns them is Spangler from Brian, Ohio's family run outfit. That's I think over 100 years old. And Spangler, very appropriately also are the ones who make circus peanuts, which is a lot of people's second most hated candy. Yeah.

So poor Spangler's putting out a lot of stuff that people don't like, but whatever, you know, hats off to them for for staying at it. But I guess Spangler did or no pre Spangler, the company that owned them, changed the recipe, like to kind of make it a little little less artificially flavored and colored. And there was a 35 percent drop in sales as a result, they went back to the original recipe. So that does mean that people out there do actually eat Necco Wafers.

They don't just use them as poker chips like you were saying.

Yeah. And, you know, hats off to the Spangler Company. We love these small kind of old school family run candy companies. I don't think that us saying that we probably won't try and Necco is going to hurt their sales. Right. Hopefully this shines a little light on that company. Yeah, but they did a survey last year in twenty twenty that said that found that 73 percent of Americans are familiar with or at least had Necco Wafers. OK, pretty good coverage there.

Yeah, it's seventy three percent baby baby boomers and Gen X obviously lead that pack but seventy one percent of millennials know about Necco Wafers. Yeah. And whatever is it. What's behind it. GenZE the. Is that 18 to 23 year old or is that even something else? I think they fall within GenZE. Yeah, we need to do that generation's podcast at some point. All right. But apparently, they obviously are sort of bringing up the rear with 40 percent awareness.

Neco awareness is what they call it, is neco awareness. But I mean, that's still pretty respectable for the 18 Bande three say.

You know what I mean. Yeah. And how much could these things I mean, what do they cost? What's the two of those costs?

I genuinely don't know. But I will tell you that there was a dark time where they were not around. Necco Wafers were purchased by Spangler in twenty eighteen and they went offline and reissued them in 2020. But now I guess they're here to stay. All right, well, I just looked it up out of curiosity, apparently he can get them delivered during covid, which is great. You can get a six pack, a Necco Wafers for about 1850.

So about three dollars a tube.

Wow. I did not expect that. You expect like 59 cents?

No, I expected it to hover more around a dollar price point. Yeah. An American classic. The original in bold letters, candy wafers since 1847. That's great.

What's cool about collecting them too? There's a lot of people who clearly collect like the old nostalgic Necco Wafers is you can eat them and they'll taste exactly the same today as they did when they were first made back in the 18th, 19th century. Does not surprise me. That's great. I made that up, by the way, but it was just a gem.

It doesn't surprise me either.

OK, well, since Chuck's not at all surprised and I think we've reached the end of this episode, I say, Chuck, short stuff is out. What do you think? Agreed. Stuff you should know is a production of radios HowStuffWorks for more podcasts, My Heart Radio, is it the radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you listen to your favorite shows?