The Abba-Zaba Baby

And here is the original Abba-Zaba baby, sitting under a taffy tree. Extraordinary, isn't it?

Chocolate Sprinkles Have a Name

Chocolate sprinkles have a name, at least, they do if you are over 40. (I mentioned this last week and will now explain more fully.) If you are over 40, you have probably already said "Jimmies!" and you're right, that's what they're called. Why?

The founder of Just Born Candy, famous today for their Marshmallow Peeps, along with Mike and Ike and Teenee Beanees, was Sam Born, who arrived in New York from Russia in 1910. He was a real Rube Goldberg inventor when it came to sweet treats. Not only did he invent the process for making the hard chocolate coating on Eskimo Pies, he also created a machine that mechanically inserted sticks into lollipops. Sam Born opened his own shop in 1923 (where he hung out a sign saying his sweets were so fresh they were "Just Born," and soon after he also came up with a chocolate-sprinkle producing machine, whose yield—Jimmies—were named for the employee who operated the apparatus, a kid named Jimmy.

Another item for True Confections, if I had only learned this sooner.

Jews and Candy

My article about the Jewish heritage of many classic American candies ran in Tablet today.

This story has a number of little nuggets I would have stuffed into True Confections (which is, by the way, plenty stuffed as it is), from chocolate sprinkles being called "jimmies" because the guy who operated the machine that made them was named Jimmy, to the reason that Goldenberg's Peanut Chews were made with peanuts instead of walnuts, because peanuts were cheaper than walnuts. Also the way Topps Gum bought up small candy companies to close them in order to get their rationed sugar quotas. Why do I love the candy business so much?

BLACK CROWS

Something I would have loved to include in True Confections had I known it before now:

You know Black Crows, those licorice gum drops you see for sale at movie theater candy counters if nowhere else?

Apparently the original intention was to call them Black Rose, but the person charged with designing and ordering the cardboard box misunderstood the request.