PUTTING THE HEADS ON PEZ DISPENSERS

Today's New York Times has a delightfully informative obituary for Curtis Allina, the leading candidate for the distinguished historical achievement that helped makes Meg Whitman all she is today -- dreaming up the notion of putting character heads on Pez dispensers -- or at least, Allina was the one who made it happen. (The first two, in 1955, were Santa Claus and a character called Space Trooper.) The original Pez product was, according to the New York Times, meant for adults, and the container was designed to resemble a cigarette lighter, which makes sense, because the original Pez mints as conceived in 1927 by Eduard Haas III (the New York Times calls him "a Viennese food products mogul") were intended both as breath mints for smokers and as an alternative to smoking. (The name Pez is a slangy contraction of pfefferminz, the German word for peppermint.) I wrote quite a bit about Pez in True Confections, and I consider myself Pez-knowledgable, but I didn't know then what I know this morning, about the original packaging. RIP, Mr. Allina. You made your mark on civilization.

Choose Your Tigermelt!

What is a Tigermelt? In my novel True Confections, it's a delicious chocolate-coated peanut and nougat candy bar, one of three candy products inspired by Little Black Sambo made by Zip's Candies since 1924. Tigermelts boast the slogan "Plain Hungry? Or Tigermelt Hungry?"

In the real world, it is apparently "an economical blend which contains potassium chloride and sodium chloride that work together to effectively melt snow and ice." This Tigermelt is also said to be odorless, will leave no residue, won't harm vegetation, and won't stain carpets, "when used as directed."

A Tiger Melt is also chicken salad with colby cheese served open faced on a toasted bagel at the Big Blue Bagel in Auburn, Alabama.

Choose your Tigermelt!

IN THE STARCH ROOM

I just learned that in certain candy factories there is an area designated the Starch Room. I want a Starch Room, don't you? Don't you think everyone should have a Starch Room? If only I had known while I was writing True Confections, then Zip's Candies would surely have had a Starch Room. Before the week is out, the Zip's Candies website (http://www.zipscandies.com/), where the fiction continues beyond the pages of the novel, will have a vintage image of their Starch Room, where the Mumbo Jumbo moguls have been racked since 1924.

Breaking the Fourth Wall

More Little Sammy Sneeze. Winsor McKay was intriguingly modern in his visual sensibility, if not in his sense of what is funny. Here, Little Sammy Sneeze breaks the fourth wall with one of those uncontrollable sneezes. It's hard to imagine what this looked like to readers a hundred years ago.

LITTLE SAMMIES

The most famous candy made by Zip's Candies in my nearly-published novel True Confections is called Little Sammies, because it was inspired by Little Black Sambo. I have no awareness of any actual candy or other product with a name anything like this, though a sandwich chain has offered small sandwiches called Little Sammies. But there was a Little Sammy Sneeze, I have just learned, long ago, in a very early Winsor McKay comic strip. Every episode concluded with an ill-timed and destructive sneeze. "He just simply couldn't stop it! He never knew when it was coming!" Apparently, in 1904, this was pricelessly funny. (McKay went on to greatness with Little Nemo.)

Lucy, Lucy, Lucy

I never described this primal television scene in the pages of True Confections, though the novel begins with a not entirely unrelated (though less frantic) moment at Zip's Candies.

Oh No! I Forgot the Chunky!

Somehow, I completely overlooked any mention of the Chunky in True Confections. And the Chunky was not only a personal childhood favorite, so where's my loyalty? but also is yet another small candy brand (these days it's made by Nestlé) started in the 1930's by an enterprising New York Jew, in this case Philip Silvershein, who named the candy, regrettably, and one wonders about her therapy, for his "chunky" granddaughter.

Some other Chunky knowledge: Chunky used to be made with cashews and Brazil nuts. There are unverified rumors that the original Chunky was intended to be a pyramid, but that proved impossible to wrap, so the top was sliced off, thus the odd shape. It's a real stand-alone candy piece: not a bar, not a bag of small pieces. The original wasn't segmented, but now it is segmented as if to be broken into quarters, though it doesn't break easily and you get messy trying so just eat the whole damned thing, okay? There are no Chunky minis that I know about. They used to make babies, called Chunky Cuties, which cost two cents. That's when comic books cost 12 cents.

Oh, Chunky.