It\u2019s hard work making a simple icon.<\/p>\n
Imagine you\u2019re a factory worker in Cincinnati way back in 1880. \u00a0It\u2019s mid-summer, there\u2019s no air conditioning, and the temperature inside the plant is well over 100 degrees. You\u2019re dressed in a heavy leather apron. \u00a0You\u2019re handed a 45-pound pail of boiling hot white liquid.\u00a0 Walking backwards, you have to carefully fill a set of metal molds exactly 1\/3 of the way to the top.\u00a0 Next, you go back to where you started, and grab a second 45-pound pail of hot liquid, this time colored orange. \u00a0Again walking backwards, you fill the same molds to the 2\/3 mark. \u00a0And then, to complete the process, you go back to the start, get a third 45-pound pail of yellow liquid, and, walking backward, fill the molds right up to the top. \u00a0The full molds are taken away, you\u2019re given a fresh empty set, and you repeat the process. \u00a0About 50 times a day, 10 hours a day, 6 days a week.<\/p>\n
Thus was born candy corn.\u00a0 It was first made by the Goelitz Company of Cincinnati in the 1830\u2019s.\u00a0 The company barely survived an economic panic in 1893, moved to North Chicago in 1912, and was so successful there that it couldn\u2019t keep up with demand. \u00a0Then came the Great Depression, and candy corn prices dropped from 16 cents a pound to just over 8 cents. \u00a0The market rebounded after World War 2, but in 1975 a spike in sugar prices forced the company to close the Chicago plant and relocate to California . \u00a0Soon after, the company became enormously successful making Jelly Bellies, especially once Ronald Reagan took office.<\/p>\n
Today candy corn is still made the same way (though now by machines and computers), and with the same basic recipe of sugar, water, egg whites, coloring and flavoring.\u00a0 Each piece has 6 calories, 1 gram of sugar, and no fat.\u00a0 There are other flavors and color varieties, but the original tri-color version remains the standard. \u00a0Candy corn is an almost entirely American institution and is virtually unheard of outside the U.S. and Canada .\u00a0 Most of it comes from just two companies, Goelitz of California and Brachs of Texas. \u00a0Over 6 billion \u201ckernels\u201d are made each year, weighing in at over 20 million pounds. \u00a0And it\u2019s only purpose in life is to celebrate Halloween:\u00a0 more than 90% of all candy corn eaten this year will be consumed in the next few days.<\/p>\n
Which is why today, October 30, is National Candy Corn Day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard work making a simple icon. Imagine you\u2019re a factory worker in Cincinnati way back in 1880. \u00a0It\u2019s mid-summer, there\u2019s no air conditioning, and the temperature inside the plant is well over 100 degrees. You\u2019re dressed in a heavy leather apron. \u00a0You\u2019re handed a 45-pound pail of boiling hot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[206,255,534,574],"class_list":["post-183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-4","tag-candy-corn","tag-cincinnati","tag-halloween","tag-history"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/183\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quicksilverhg.com\/thequicksliver\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}