Better ‘get you some’ candy corn before the stores run out

Candy corn season is here. The familiar triangular shape and color scheme hasn’t changed in more than 100 years – white tip, orange middle and yellow bottom. It tastes the same, too. 

This waxy, tricolored sugary-sweet morsel is made with corn syrup and just a dab of honey mixed in. Candy corn has become a Halloween fixture in America.

 

Most historians agree that candy corn was created in the late 1880s by young candymaker George Renninger, an employee of Wunderle Candy Company, in Philadelphia, a business owned by Philip Wunderle. 

Apparently a very dedicated and talented confectioner, Renninger is credited with inventing the whole genre of “butter cream soft candy, known as ‘mellow crèmes,’” wrote Danya Henninger, a Philadelphia journalist. 

(Wunderle remained a local candy company, with Philip’s sons George and Harvey entering the business. When George Renniger died in 1944, at age 87, his obituary stated he had been associated with Wunderle Candy for 68 years.) 

The first company to manufacture candy corn in a big way was A & G Confectionary Company of Belleville, Ill. The business was formed in 1898 by brothers Adolf and Gustav Goelitz. They learned candy making from their father and uncles. Goelitz family members began coming to the United States from Germany in the 1840s. 

“The Goelitzes may have bought the recipe from Wunderle or crafted their own version of candy corn,” suggested Kate Kelly, publisher of the America Comes Alive! Website. “No matter, Goelitz is the company that firmly established candy corn in the marketplace.” 

The product was first named and advertised as “chicken feed.” The candy boxes featured the picture of a rooster who boasted that the candy treat was “something worth crowing for.” He was dubbed “King of the Candy Corn Fields.”

 

If you look at a piece of upside-down candy corn, the yellow portion does resemble a kernel of corn, and down on the farm, corn was what you fed the chickens. They love it; it’s their favorite food. 

Was it an early form of “target marketing?” In the Midwest, especially, farm families made up a big chunk of the population from the 1890s-1940s. 

Meghan Overdeep of Southen Living magazine reminds us: “People didn’t start calling it candy corn until the 1940s, when trick-or-treating took off after WWII. The candy’s harvest hues and low price point made it a popular choice for trick-or-treating, and it quickly became associated with Halloween.”

 

It’s easy to skittle around the numbers when trying to predict 2021 Halloween candy preferences, because there are so many more products than there used to be. Still, Sara Broek of Better Homes and Gardens magazine is wagering that 95% of Halloween holiday shoppers will stock up on the tri-color treat this year.

The National Confectioners Association predicts that easily more than 35 million pounds (or 9 billion pieces) of candy corn will be produced this year. 

Kate Kelly offered the analogy: “Candy corn is to Halloween what the candy cane is to Christmas. We may not dream of eating either of them, but each is the iconic candy for its holiday.” 

Candy corn is not especially good for one’s waistline or for one’s teeth. Eat in moderation. About three treats per day. Brush your teeth within minutes of consuming each treat, and you should be OK.

 

For a great Halloween decoration activity, build an entire ear of corn on the cob with your candy corn kernels. Directions are easy to find online.