For anyone who grew up in the 1950s to mid-1970s, few childhood memories carry as much magic as the neighborhood “penny candy store.” It was rarely a gleaming, brightly lit confectionery. More often than not, it was a dark, cramped little shack. A neighborhood corner grocer, or a family-run dry-goods shop. But for a child … Read more

Ask almost anyone in advertising or business school why early cake mixes failed, and you will hear the exact same famous story. The legend goes like this: In the early 1950s, Betty Crocker launched a revolutionary “just add water” instant cake mix. It was a triumph of food processing technology, everything needed for a rich, … Read more

Today, candy brands compete almost entirely on taste, texture, and flavor intensity. From extreme sour coatings to single-origin dark chocolate, modern candy is engineered to deliver an immediate sensory reward. In the mid-to-late 20th century, however, a huge segment of the candy industry operated on a completely different business model: the interactive novelty candy. For … Read more

In the summer of 1941, as the United States prepared for entry into World War II, a new candy hit American assembly lines. It didn’t look like the heavy chocolate bars of the era, and it wasn’t sold in traditional grocery stores. Packed into narrow cardboard tubes, the entire initial run was bought by the … Read more

Search for the origin of Salisbury Steak, and you will run into a web of confident misconceptions. You may read that it was invented purely as a Civil War treatment for dysentery, served as a bland, unseasoned lump of meat. It’s also claimed that it was created as an “offshoot” of the German Hamburg steak, … Read more