This is the full transcript for Episode #352 of the Wild Business Growth podcast featuring Jason Liebig – Candy Historian, Collecting Candy. You can listen to the interview and learn more here. Please note: this transcript is not 100% accurate.
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Fun is a choice. So choose to have fun.
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A sweet hello. Welcome back to Wild Business Growth. This is your place to hear from a wild entrepreneur every single Wednesday morning, turning wild ideas into wild growth. I’m Max Brandstetter from Max Podcasting, and this is episode 352. Today’s guest is Jason Liebig. He is someone you can call a candy historian, a brand historian, nostalgia historian. He is the man behind CollectingCandy.com, the social media handles.
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@CollectingCandy and he’s consulted for hit shows like Stranger Things, Mad Men, The Queen’s Gambit, The Goldbergs, Young Sheldon. And you can even find him starring in The Foods That Built America, Hazardous History with Henry Winkler, and more shows on the History Channel. In this episode, we talk all the nostalgia you can stomach ranging from Fun Dip to Kit Kat Bars.
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to the incredible entrepreneurial stories behind some of your favorite candy brands out there. It is the big. Enjoy the show.
01:30
Already we are here with Jason Liebig who knows just one or two more fun facts about candy than the rest of our guests. uh Somebody who’s able to call himself a nostalgia historian can teach me how to pronounce the word nostalgia as well as uh just absolute amazing candy collector and you can see him on TV. So you can see his candies all over TV that he’s touched. That doesn’t sound right.
01:58
Jason, thank you so much for joining. How you doing today? I’m doing great, Max. Thank you so much for that questionable intro. I love it. You know, this is a we’re over 350 episodes now. I think that’s the first time an intro has been called questionable. So we’re clearly moving in the right direction, but so excited to talk all things candy. And before that, you see it all the time on social media these days. You see it all the time on TV, the word nostalgia and anything nostalgic. It gives you literally that that warm fuzzy feeling.
02:28
in your chest, but it seems like every year, nostalgia becomes more more important. we’re like, younger generations are like yearning for the memories of stuff we grew up with. Why is it that you think nostalgia like leaves such a strong impression and creates such strong like buying power? think nostalgia, know, nostalgia has been looked upon different ways by different people. Certainly, you know, there is an aspect of
02:58
The great philosophers, existential thinkers have always talked about living in the now, right? The past is the past, the future is the future, live in the now. These are powerful ideas and I believe in them. But I also believe in the power of history, certainly, and how history can inform our way forward and how history can teach us and it can give us joy because it can inform the now. uh But why is nostalgia more and more important? I would say A, that in the internet age,
03:27
um Certainly, it’s never been more accessible to us. And that, think, makes it… I always say accessibility makes things nostalgic. And so, if you couldn’t listen to the songs you grew up with, it would be harder to be specifically nostalgic for them. You could still have a relationship to them. And working in the space that I do, Candy Snacks, these CPG brands, and the history of those…
03:56
and the nostalgia attached to those. Coming into it when I did 25 years ago, much of it wasn’t Google-able. You couldn’t Google images of like an old candy wrapper or an old snack package. So it was much harder to connect to that part of your personal nostalgia. In some cases, I still get these emails every week, can you help me remember what this was called? And when your nostalgia exists in mythology, it’s harder to connect to it. But because we live in an age where so much is documented, so much has been dug up,
04:26
You know, people are always searching for lost media, old commercials, old TV shows that aren’t currently online to try to rescue them from old VHS tapes, et cetera, et cetera. As that becomes more accessible, people then can then plug into it more, they can have a stronger relationship to it. And that is, I believe, one of the reasons why nostalgia has become more important. Certainly, if you wanna talk about the speeding up of change in our lives,
04:52
You know, I think, what was it? Future Shock was a book written in 1970 or 71. This seminal book about how life and society and technology was speeding up so rapidly. We weren’t biologically designed to keep up with it. And that was 1970. And the speed at which life changes in the 21st century is 10 times that. So I think there’s an aspect of it allows us, it’s almost like a sort of calming effect.
05:20
as the world is rapidly speeding you around you in a blur sometimes. But nostalgia is also just, it’s very personal. When people hear, oh my God, you’re a candy historian, you’re the nation’s foremost candy historian, you know a lot about food history or whatever, people always have a story they want to tell me. And here’s the thing, I am probably more excited to hear that story than they are excited to tell me about it. I love hearing these stories. Certainly where candy is concerned, specifically.
05:48
Those stories will almost always be connected to a person and a place that from their childhood filled with love, know, and filled with connection and filled with people. You know, when people say they’re nostalgic for some candy or whatever of their past or whatever it is, some potato chip flavor that doesn’t exist or the way McDonald’s used to look or the way Taco Bell used to look, I always like to say it’s not really about the Taco Bell.
06:16
It’s not really about the Crunchwrap Supreme or the flavor of Doritos. It’s about the people and the people that were there in your life at that moment and the times you had with them. Almost always, don’t get me wrong. Like you can really obsess over the thing, but that thing is almost always connected to the people that were around it at the time. And in the way that music can provide this sort of little time machine, it can take you back to a place and the people or a smell of a certain perfume.
06:43
Seeing a certain brand packaging can take you back to a place and it can trigger a part of your brain. Neuroscience teaches us this, right? It can take you back to a place in a memory in a profound way that can’t get you there any other way. Those beautifully said and I was thinking the whole time, I was going back through my Rolodex as we use when I was growing, no, I’m just kidding. But like going back through my memories of like candies and snacks that mean a lot to me and.
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I have to shout out my mom because her like famous cookie and know, sweets recipe was Reese’s cookies. Or if you say Reese’s cookies, I know there’s a whole debate about that. Anyway, she like in like a muffin tray or cookie tray, whatever, whatever. What have the mini Reese’s cups around that is like cookie dough. And then so like when it bakes, especially when it’s fresh out of the oven, it’s like the chocolate is like melt in your mouth and there’s a chocolate chip cookie around it.
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So good, shout out my college roommate Tyreek who was always craving those and always welcomed any gifts like those. so that’s like in our family, even though my brother’s allergic to peanut butter, she made Hershey Kiss versions too. That treat and that snack is like so close to home and yeah, full of love as you said. Yes, but to your other question, why do know, why do brands tap into this? Look, brands have very readily tapped into this idea that look, brands are just trying to connect to consumers.
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If you can connect emotionally to a consumer, you connect your product emotionally to a consumer, that’s 70 % of the way to get them to buy it. In the capitalist enterprise, nostalgia is a very, very effective selling tool. it’s also, look, it’s just a great way to connect people. Look, Santa Claus was, the modern version of Santa Claus was kind of invented, you know, to create this nostalgic bond. So many big things in business. Like I think Disney parks almost exists entirely out of nostalgia.
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When Walt Disney designed Main Street USA in Disneyland, he didn’t choose turn of the century America because, this is going to be quaint and provincial and won’t that be nice to have a park. That was his childhood, right? That’s what America looked like in his childhood. This sort of transition from the pre-industrial age to the industrial age. So the first cars, you so the old timey cars and the barber store quartets, that’s the world that Walt Disney grew up in.
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And so that was, it was nostalgic for him. And now it’s nostalgic for generations of Americans because that to them is that place. So anytime you can get a shortcut, anytime you can connect and create a bond with consumers, it’s great. think, you know, look, I’m a big fast food fan. think McDonald’s has really taken their time to come around to realizing they’ve got all this valuable IP just literally sitting in a cabinet.
09:27
um For years, you know, they were still doing their licensing things, movies, cartoons, whatever license, trying to get people into the stores, you know, another, and they’re bringing back Monopoly, although now the Monopoly promo is nostalgic, right? It’s nostalgic for people from like the late 80s and the 90s. But they finally started tapping into their own repertoire of nostalgia. They really stayed away from the McDonaldland characters. They would rather get like a hip hop star or some music person to come in and do their meal.
09:55
But now they’re like, no, fuck it, let’s do a Grimace meal. You let’s do a Hamburglar promotion. Like that’s us. We did all that. That’s one of my favorite lines I’ve ever heard. Fuck it, let’s do a Grimace. Yes. No, but and when they did that, I mean, right now I think over in China, there’s a big Grimace promotion. I’m super jealous. Like I wish I was over there because there’s all this great Grimace stuff. Even in Australia, I think, and maybe part of Asia, like here in America, we’ve got the Grinch meal right now. It’s an adult happy meal, essentially.
10:25
The Grinch meal, what are the prize? You get socks, you get Grinch socks. Perfectly fine. I love Dr. Seuss, I love the Grinch. What do you get in Australia? You get snow globes with Grimace, Bertie and Hamburglar and the Grinch. I’m like, come on, give us the snow globes, American McDonald’s. We deserve them. To your point, nostalgia, it just works. It takes you to a place where you feel safe, you know, and a lot of people wanna feel safe when they’re buying a product. And you know, a neuroscientist,
10:54
could define it little better, but I do think there are multiple tracks of nostalgia. There’s literal nostalgia, and then there’s sort of nostalgic anchors that just make you feel like, oh, this reminds me of this. It’s not the exact thing, but it reminds me of that. So there are a lot of different ways that brands and companies can utilize nostalgia to try to use it as a tool for their brand, for their sales.
11:19
So let’s get to something you’re nostalgic about, and that’s your candy collection. Sure. As we always say on the show, no one becomes a candy historian overnight, let alone the first, know, the foremost candy historian. How did you, what was like the moment that inspired you to start collecting like candy packaging and things of that aura era? oh
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lore. It’s a great question, Max. I did grow up being a collector. I collected comic books. I collected baseball cards, trading cards, Star Wars cards. ah I continued to collect comic books and read comic books up through high school and into college. I suppose I might have taken a couple years off in there, but when I was in college, things really took off. Comics were getting very mature. Things like Sandman, things like The Dark Knight Returns, Watchmen. These are very complex.
12:08
very mature storylines. you felt like, it didn’t have to be so embarrassing to read comic books, even though it’s still a little wise. After college, I came to New York to work in the comic book business, and I was successful. I got a job at DC Comics. I would be reading my com. I would be the only person reading comics in the train, but that’s OK in the subway. Then I got a job at Marvel Comics. My first job was a job in marketing, but my job at Marvel was in creative editorial. And so I got to work with all the artists, the designers.
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the writers, and it was a fabulous time. And during that five year stretch that I worked at Marvel Comics, I spent a lot of time in the bullpen with our designers, laying out cover design. I had no formal design training, and I basically got a design education by sitting over the shoulder of people, asking questions, watching what they were doing, and listening, learned about, you know, I remember the first time I heard the term negative space, right? This was not a term I’d heard in my college experience or my high school or anything.
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So I learned about those things. I learned about publishing terms. I learned about CYMK, know, publishing printing colors, not RGB, you know, all these other things. Trapping. Nobody was ever trapping anything right in the early days of digital comic book coloring. So all these interesting terms came into my lexicon. And about two years after I left the industry, I was shooting a film in Boston, Massachusetts, and I had a day off. And because it was 2002,
13:33
I didn’t have a smartphone because they did not exist. I did not have Instagram or TikTok to kill time. So I went down to a Barnes and Noble bookstore. I was a regular customer at Barnes and Noble. I was hanging out in the design section of the bookstore. And in the design section, I came across a book called Crazy Kids Food, Crazy Kids Food. And it was a small book, absolutely packed to the gills with photos of kids food packaging from the 50s, 60s, and 70s.
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That book written by Dan Goodsell, who’s now a very close friend of mine, and Steve Rodin, who unfortunately passed away a couple years ago, Steve and Dan had created this really awesome little digest book filled with all this colorful packaging of the past. I bought it, took it back to my hotel room, and I poured over it probably 20 times that night. It was very easy flip, you know, it very easy flip through not a lot of text. I, somewhere around then, and this was probably the inciting notion,
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I had the notion, you know what, when I get back to New York, I wanna have three things for my office. I wanna have a Hot Tamales box from when I was a kid, a Marathon Bar chocolate bar wrapper from when I was a kid, and a Super Sugar Crisp cereal box from when I was a kid. And I wanna put them in the office, and won’t that be fun? Those will be like, that’s like my Star Wars poster or whatever that I have in the office. And that’ll be fun. And when I return to New York, I go to eBay, I look for these things, you can’t just find them on eBay.
14:58
um They were incredibly hard to curate. I think I got my first Marathon Bar rapper like seven years later. It took me, I think, two years to get my, first Hot Tamales box. That Hot Tamales box saved by a flight attendant because Ricky Henderson was on her flight and she got him to, it’s the only thing she had for him to autograph. So it had Ricky Henderson’s autograph on it. Oh my God. Yeah. And all I could think was, oh.
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I wish this didn’t have that autograph on it. Even though I I love Ricky Henderson. He’s great. But I was like, oh, I kind of wanted just a clean He was known for stealing basses. So he stole the packaging too. That’s right. He did. But I got it. And that was, you know, and that was the beginning. And yet even then, the cereal box was far easier because there are a little more, there are a few more cereal boxes out there. Still not very many. But it took time. And I would eventually through a series of events,
15:54
find a collection, a collection sort of came to me from a guy that I’d bought a cereal box from online. And we were having a conversation. He goes, oh man, I see you share a lot of candy packages on your Flickr, which was where I was scanning things obsessively, sharing images. And he goes, you know, my dad, his dad, by the way, is like the nation’s number one tiki sculptor. His dad is a fairly famous tiki artist, right? I was going to guess. I could tell based on context clues. And so.
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He said, yeah, my dad saved all of this candy packaging when he was like a kid back in the late 60s and early 70s and through the 70s and into the 80s. I was like, oh my God, would you be interested in it? And I was like, well, of course. As I acquired that, there was so much candy in there and candy as a category had not been documented well at all online. I will tell journalists that when I started back in 2002, if there had been a website where you could look at pictures of every candy package ever,
16:52
I wouldn’t have ever started collecting. I’d been like, great, I can spend like an hour of a day, an hour a day for the next month going through this website. And won’t that be fun? That’ll be great. And then I’ll move on with my life. As it turns out, there were maybe across all of the internet, a couple of hundred, maybe 300 images of old candy packages, almost every single one of them published by Dan Goodsell, the guy from that, co-wrote that book, and a lovely woman named Darlene Lacey, who runs a website called the Candy Wrapper Museum.
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And aside from the work they had done in the space, there was really nothing out there. So because I have a bit of madness in me and probably had a good bit of OCD, well, when I got that big collection from the Tiki guy, I scanned and posted all 700 pieces of it. And I just kept doing that. And in the next decade, I would probably share about, I don’t know, anywhere from six to 10,000 pieces from my ever-growing collection.
17:50
And I always had a rule. I had this rule initially. I don’t have it so much anymore. But I said, if you could Google an image of this package, I’m not going to share it. Because why? Who cares? It’s already out there. Keep in mind, I’m now sharing 10,000 pieces that you couldn’t even see online before. And so, and unfortunately, because Pinterest didn’t exist, Instagram didn’t exist, Google image shirts I don’t think existed until a year or two after I started, I had no idea.
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how important it would be to watermark anything. And so now, I occasionally get in arguments with people that’s like, that’s not your image. And I was like, it is, man, that’s my photo, I’m sorry. But yeah, but I watermark kind of like a jerk now, but that’s just because I shared like 20,000 things that are now that everybody takes ownership of. And that’s fine, it is what it is. ah It’d be nice to get credit, just credit, I’m not asking for a dollar.
18:42
But so, yeah, but so I think that collection that I bought, that would have been 2009, I think is when I fully leaned in on Kandy. Three years later, I would launch collectingcandy.com. That’s when I’d also launch my Instagram account, which I’m still very active on. And over the next decade, I would publish probably, I think 647 articles on that website, about 6,000 images all out of my own stuff, all things you couldn’t really Google before. It was just a massive amount of work and time.
19:10
And I wish I had that much time to devote to it still. Because I know you love this stuff. When you said that book, would you call it crazy crazy kids food with a K? Of course. When you said that the food that sparked into my head was when Heinz ketchup did the different colored ketchup. Easy squirts. Yeah, easy squirt. Yeah, because I remember that because like I was a kid at that time. Like you had to try it. So like I think I remember the green ones, the purple ones, obviously not the longest lasting.
19:40
product in history, but I’ll give them credit for being and being a crazy kid’s food. Heinz Easy Squirts, I do have a full collection of those bottles. I don’t like three-dimensional things, but my brother’s kids had the green one. And as like a collector and archivist, was like, listen, these are just too fun. And I finally completed, only like three months ago, I finally completed all the colors of the bottles in their regular format, like not with like a promotion on.
20:07
How many different colors were there? There was, let me see, was green, there was red, they did do a just a standard red color. Yeah, that was very clever though. let me see, green, red, purple, um blue, and then there’s like a mystery, which again now is just black. If you try to open this up now it’s just black goo. But the color of the bottle was sort of rainbow, it was not rainbow colored inside though, they just randomly give you whatever color. And then about two years ago, there was a uh weird discovery.
20:37
of a follow-up of Heinz Easy Squirt like pizza-flavored sauce. And yeah, there were three weird test-market things and a guy came up with a box of them. And so me and like three other collectors each got like a set of these and they’re wild. And they, believe because it was came out of Pittsburgh, which is where Heinz is located. We believe they test-marketed a later run extension of the brand, but it never went outside of a test market area. So anyway, yes, Heinz Easy Squirt’s fantastic.
21:05
I love weirdly colored things. think Pop Secret did like a multicolored popcorn. ORAIDA, I’d love to get a package for this. ORAIDA did like crazy fries, like different colored French fries. So they were like green French fries. That’s like the low-hanging fruit for for a kid’s product. Just like do it a different color and like, Oh my God, mom, we gotta, we gotta get the purple one. When I talk about innovation with brands or companies or people, I was like, listen, sometimes all you need to do.
21:33
is change the delivery system. Changing the delivery system can change everything. That’s not hyperbole and that is not exaggeration. And there are stories in the history of food and CPG brands where you change the delivery system and suddenly everybody’s super into it. I’ll just call you a hall of fame collector. You’re a fantastic collector. So many of us growing up collecting something for my family and I when I was younger. In addition to my dad’s baseball cards, we had
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bobbleheads. like all the bobbleheads you get at sporting events, especially baseball games. So lots and lots of Cleveland bobbleheads in our basement growing up. Anyway, what have you learned about collecting over the years? Like what are some good ways, if you want to have an impressive collection of whatever, what are some ways to kind of have some shortcuts or tips there? Oh, that’s a, gosh, that’s a really good question. I’ve collected things my whole life. The last 20 years I’ve been, don’t get me wrong, all of the drives of a collector are in me.
22:28
Unfortunately, like I’m probably more of an archive. People always say, oh, can I come and look at the collection? I said, it’s really a working archive. I don’t have displays or anything like that. Shortcuts are, you know, unlimited money and unlimited space. I mean, that’s the best shortcut. If you can inherit a collection, that’s great. I don’t know, cause I know people, I know like a guy who’s built a tremendous collection by going around and buying other people’s collections. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve…
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I’ve inherited massive collections of this material when I’ve been fortunate, and there’s not many out there, when I’ve been fortunate enough to find them. And again, I’m not an investor collector. know many great baseball card investor collectors. I approach this material a little differently. I understand that and I respect it. I approach this from the joy perspective, you know? And certainly as a historian, like look, I’m trying to unlock the histories of these brands, trying to build them together like puzzle pieces, like an archeologist. That’s really the work I do.
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As a collector, I think, you know, you just follow your joy a little bit and try to put something together. And hopefully, every piece you have will tell a story. Before scrapbooking became an organized thing, when people would take road trips or vacations, they would save things from their hotel, you know? And so it’s not that they were obsessed with a Do Not Disturb sign or a key fob from a Holiday Inn or a matchbook.
23:52
they would look at that and it would remind them of a time. It really calls back to what I talked about. With candy, know, souvenirs and collecting things could help tell a story. That can easily, again, turn into like hoarding or just obsessive collecting. Like, oh, have to have every issue of Amazing Spider-Man. And as long as it brings you joy, good. You know, I mean, that’s my thing. If it brings you joy and no one’s getting hurt, great. um Do it, enjoy it. I think my journey in this category is so…
24:21
unique and insane, you know, and unmanageable, I think, for even myself at times. I don’t know. Like if someone wanted to say, oh, I want to start collecting comic books, I would say just, you know, well, hopefully just find a comic book you really like with a writer, with a creative team, you know, and build your experience from that. The thing about love, nerdy hobbies, and probably nerdy isn’t even fair to say anymore, people who are obsessed with craft beer or coffee or whatever,
24:49
Save things that will remind you of the, collect the things that will remind you of the thing that you love about that thing. And if you can do that, whether it’s records, whether it’s bobbleheads, know, souvenirs from vacations, you know, I, like I said, I love fast food stuff. I’ll have fast food items, you know, packaging. I was just showing a friend of mine, I have like an original 1968 Taco Bell sleeve that a taco burger might’ve come in or some taco, you know, so all that stuff.
25:18
because I’m obsessed with brands, those things are meaningful to me. But in your personal life, I don’t know, I don’t think you need to take a shortcut. think take the long road, it’s a better road. Words to collect by, think following joy is a good route, no matter what you’re doing. Exactly. And for you, like if you look at your career, it’s really cool, because you made, if you can call it that pivot, you made the pivot from comic books to candy and snacks. And somewhere along the way,
25:44
someone decided that you have enough credibility to put you on TV. That’s a pretty cool jump too. How did you brush up your chops enough to become a true historian and know enough about all these brands and this history to, well, one, be featured on TV yourself, but also to become a consultant for some amazing shows like Mad Men, Stranger Things, Young Shot, you name it, really, really cool projects.
26:06
You know, the thing that I realized early on, and I didn’t know the terminology, but a business guy told me, he goes, you really found a white space. Right? Wait, so you found a white space and a negative space. You’re like the king of spaces here. He says you really found a white space. And he’s right. Like, I found a place where no one was playing in that sandbox. And you know, the funny thing is, one of the reasons why, because I was collecting probably when I was a collector,
26:32
Early on, was probably collecting cereal boxes a little more because there were more out there to buy and find at the time. But then I was sort of like, oh, this is getting, there are too many other people collecting. I just want to go to a place that I can just call my own. And so when I found this collection, it opened me up to sort of like, okay, no one else is really collecting candy. I’ll just do that. But in so doing, through, again, nostalgia and just an interest in the fact that no one else had done it. Like I said, if someone else had done it, if all the stuff was known,
27:01
I don’t think there’s any way I’d be doing it. I don’t think I would have cared. If someone had already collected and set up a museum or set up a website or published a book with all this stuff in it, I’d be like, okay, good, someone did it. The fact that no one had done it, was like, well, this is kind of fun. Even today, this year I made multiple discoveries of things and brand extensions that I didn’t know existed that are fully undocumented. And so this sense of discovery is a big part of the journey.
27:29
The head of the art department from Mad Men, she gave me this great quote, which I’ve never published, but I always share with people. They were looking for stuff for an episode and they got to me. And then months later, they were looking for something very different and that path also got to me. And she said, wow, all the roads lead to Jason. And I suppose in an elegant way, that is one of the ways I made the jump. Certainly working with Mad Men.
27:59
It was, well, I had the stuff and no one else had the stuff. At least no one had published it. There may have been people with a full room of it, right? But they, you know, but the world didn’t know. When people went on and they started Googling looking for like an old FAO Schwartz shopping bag from 1968, the only image they found was mine. When Stranger Things Season One was being developed, you know, and they were in there, their props department was looking for a 1980s Eggo waffles box, the
28:27
only image of a 1980s Eggo waffle box on the entirety of the internet. Well, it was this one right here. This guy right here. This is the Eggo box that all of the Season 1 Eggo waffle boxes were made out of.
28:44
I want to flip it on its head a little bit because you, mean, as part of your research and as part of, you being an expert in what you’re an expert in, you’ve come across so many amazing stories of like candy entrepreneurship. So like how, how candy brands were started or invented. So I was wondering if you could just share, you know, a couple here, maybe just some, fascinating entrepreneurial story of how a candy came to be. One that comes to mind because it’s easy for me to tell.
29:12
is the story that I launched my website with. uh Now, like I said, I think I published 650 articles on my website over a period of like six or seven years principally. And so a lot of them I spending like a day on or a day or two on, having years of research behind me. But when I launched the website, I launched it with a feature on the history of Big League Chew. I did the biggest story of Big League Chew ever.
29:37
And I spent a year on that post, right? I’m gonna spend a year on the first post and then I’m gonna spend like six hours on every other post after that. But across that year, I interviewed Jim Boughton, who was the partner of Rob Nelson. Rob Nelson, it was his invention with help from Todd Field, the Batboy of the Portland Mavericks. But here’s a guy, great education, but he was a pitcher.
30:00
and he ended up at a certain point in his career out in Portland pitching for the Portland Mavericks and being a pitching coach for the Portland Mavericks. Jim Bouton, former New York Yankee, also out there. The Portland Mavericks in the 70s are best described as like the real life bad news bears. A little bit like what the Savannah Bananas are incredibly successful at doing. They basically took independent baseball at the Portland Mavericks in the 1970s and they turned it into a show, right? They really turned it into a show.
30:29
And so I think the Savannah bananas live in the shadow of the Portland Mavericks. But again, I’m not taking anything away from the Savannah bananas. They are amazing at what they do. And they deserve all the credit. So here’s Rob Nelson. And Rob Nelson will tell the story that, you know, he was seeing uh the bullpen and, you know, guys were spitting tobacco in their shiny new cleats, you know, and he was not a tobacco user. And he was like, ah, it’s too bad. There’s nothing else that, there’s not another option for us, right?
30:58
And there was a bat boy, Todd Field, who is now Oscar nominated Todd Field, famous director in Hollywood. But he was the bat boy of the Portland Mavericks. He had like cut up, I think, black licorice, put it in like a pouch. And so Rob was like, that’s a pretty good idea. I wonder if we could do that with bubble gum. So he ended up going with Todd Field. They went to Todd Field’s mom’s house. Todd Field’s mom is named Candy, Candy Field.
31:26
I mean, that’s just meant to be. Right? Yeah, it’s Kismet, as they say. And Rob, think, out of like some magazine, ordered a homemade bubblegum kit out of the back of some magazine and ordered it up and they fried up their first batch of bubblegum, cut it up into little strips, put it in a pouch. And that was the first test batch of what would become Big League Chew. Rob came up with the name, but he talked to Jim Bouton about it. Jim Bouton, former New York Yankee, former broadcaster.
31:54
author of the seminal behind the scenes book on baseball, Ball Four. The first really expose, know, very controversial expose on the behind the scenes of baseball. But Jim Bowen was an entrepreneur, lifelong entrepreneur, and he looked at that, he was like, hey, there’s something there, Rob. He goes, if we partner together, I’ll introduce you to the right people, I’ll invest some money into developing it. And they shopped it around to everybody, but they ended up at Wrigley, and they showed it to them, showed them the name.
32:23
And Wrigley was like, oh, we’re interested in this. One of our guys over at our Amaral Confections plant, over at Naperville, Illinois, he’s like a crazy mad scientist with all this stuff. He’s figured out how to shred gum, you know, like in a machine-wise. He’s figured out how do this. But we didn’t know what to do with it. This though, this format that you’ve got here, this is cool. Like we could go with this. So they’re like, what we’d like to do is we’d like to license the name and the branding from you. And you know, and we’ll give you a percentage of the sales or whatever. And what do you think?
32:53
And so they went with it. Now, here’s the part that I think all entrepreneurs should hear. First of all, I don’t think Wrigley had high hopes for Big League Chew. They had a lot of products coming out that they would come out for six months, two years. They were like, ah, this is probably no big deal. And if you look, and as a historian, I’ve looked back over internal, they’re an internal company magazine, the same year they came out with a product called Chewbops, which were little record-shaped slabs of gum, circular with a little, they looked like little mini records.
33:21
But they came in little record album sleeves and little LP sleeves that they got licensed for actual records that you could get at the record store. So they were spending all this money to get Aerosmith and, you know, all these famous bands, Blondie, Kiss, The Beatles. So there were all these things. They spent four pages talking about Chewbops in their company magazine. And then they spent like a little square talking about Big League Chew. Just a little paragraph. It was a little sort of an afterthought. And I think that’s definitely what they thought of Big League Chew. They didn’t think much of it initially.
33:50
Big Leecher in their first year sold like 16 million pouches. That’s how successful it was. And I think in a year or two, they did 16 million pouches. That netted Rob Nelson and Jim Brown a fair amount of money. uh More so than they could have possibly imagined. But here’s the crazy part. Rob Nelson tells me, he goes, you know, if they would have offered us a hundred grand to buy it outright, we would have sold it. And he goes, I would have paid off my parents’ mortgage.
34:15
and I would have gone back to being a teacher and wouldn’t have that have been great, right? Oh, look at that. But they had no confidence in it, so they just gave, they threw us a licensing amount, and I’ve become a bubblegum mogul over the last 45 years. And it’s true. And so don’t sell your ideas, people. Hold onto them. Unless you’ve built it up like a billion dollar brand and then do what you will. But, you know, or hold onto a piece of it because you just never know.
34:44
When you put it in the right hands, it can blow up. That’s that story. And I’ll tell you one other little story. Because Big League Chew is sort of this beautiful story. It’s an all-American story about a guy who developed a thing. But there was a company. Well, if you know what Fun Dip is, if you know what Sweet Tarts are, you know this company. They would be called Sunline in the 1950s and 1960s. But in the 1930s, they launched a product called Fru-tola, which became Fru-zola, because you couldn’t call it fruit.
35:13
It was basically almost like a little Kool-Aid in a little packet, little paper packet, and it was such a sugary powder. And they sold it out of a cart. And as business went on, it was very successful. They renamed it to a thing called Licomade. They were really trying to focus on it being a candy. They sound like AI-generated names. Yeah, Licomade. From an AI brainstormed Well, Licomade is actually the functional part of Fun Dip. If you know what Fun Dip is, little sticks. Yeah, the powder you’re dipping it in is Licomade powder.
35:42
pretty much unchanged since like 1938. And actually if you look on a package, even today, if you look on a pack of Fun Dip, you will see the word Lick-O-Made written on there, and small print around the logo. Unfortunately, Lick-O-Made by itself stopped being manufactured about two years after Fun Dip came out, because like, oh my God, the kids just like the sticks. So Lick-O-Made was selling very well, so much so that the founder’s son, guy named Menlo Smith, moved the company to St. Louis. They were now distributing Lick-O-Made across the country.
36:11
And here’s what I talked to, we talked about format earlier and they were doing well, but people still were, sometimes even the retailers were confused that it wasn’t a candy product because in the packet it looked too much like Kool-Aid. Is this for drinks? Is this a beverage? Where do we stock it? They said, you know what, gosh, we need a way to like communicate that this is candy. If that was your mission and you were like a grad student or whatever, you’re working on your management degree or something, it’s like, oh, can we change the marketing? Can we come up with a quick jingle?
36:38
Can we change the packaging? know, can we show a picture of kids enjoying it like candy? Yeah, you could do all that. What they did was they took the exact same product, that little sugary powder in multiple flavors, a little tart, a little sweet, and they put it in a paper straw, colorful paper straw, they bent off the ends of it, and they rebranded it into Pixie Stix. And when they did that, everybody immediately understood that it was candy, and sales went through the roof. And that’s why I say you just never know.
37:08
all you might need to do is change the delivery system. it changed, literally it changed their sales like by a margin of I think a factor of like five or 10. I had no idea those were cousins. No, they’re literally the same product in a different package. Now, if you want to get even crazier, if you want to get even crazier, that was like 1958, 1959. Pixie Sticks now are selling like gangbusters. They’re doing really well. So suddenly this company out of St. Louis is selling sugary powder.
37:37
to kids across America, right? Sugary powder is everywhere. Well, one of their research guys was like, listen, lot of parents have complaints out there. Like, they’re getting the sugary powder everywhere. It’s in the seat cushions, it’s in their bed, it’s on the floor, we’re ants, right? Nobody wants ants. They’re like, I wonder what we can do about that. And Menlo Smith himself, the son of the founder, now the head of the company, is like, okay, he happened, well, he was in St. Louis.
38:06
One of the other great products that came out of St. Louis is a product called Tums, the antacid. And Menlo Smith had developed a relationship with a guy from Tums. So he was like, listen, can I bring my Pixie Sticks powder down to your factory and can we see, can we take it from one of your old tablet making machines and see if we can press it into a tablet? And that’s what they did. And when they were done, it worked. So they got these pressed. They now took Lick-O-Made slash Pixie Sticks powder, pressed it together.
38:35
And what did they have? Well, they ended up inventing sweet tarts and that is sweet tarts. So sweet tarts are literally the exact same product as Pixie Stix and Lick-It-Made just in compressed dextrose format. Oh my God, that’s brilliant. It’s all the same. It makes me think of how like, I remember when I was college, we saw some video about this. It was about like being operationally efficient with your business and how Taco Bell is like.
39:01
Like they don’t use that many ingredients. Maybe they use more now, but they don’t use that many ingredients, but they, like you were talking about with, with packaging or distribution, they present things in different ways. So like it might be the same meat and all their different offerings, but like, know personally, I would love to eat a meat burrito, a ground beef burrito. I would love to eat a ground beef taco. I’d love to eat ground beef in a crunch wrap even like they’re so brilliant with that. And so it’s really cool to hear that in the candy space. do that as well.
39:26
No, I’ve made efforts to interview the people who used to work for the company. I’ve interviewed Menlo Smith. He is 98 years old and he is still alive. I actually spent two hours with him about a month ago. I flew myself at St. Louis, sat down, got him on camera, interviewed him to tell me that story personally, because I did hear it kind of two years earlier. But one of the things I heard from many employees of that company is like, listen, we really only made like three things and we just kept remixing different ways. We came up with
39:55
over 100 products out of those three ingredients, essentially. If you’ve ever heard of chewy sweet tarts, very chewy sweet tarts, they still make them. Chewy sweet tarts are just them taking tangy taffy, which is now branded as Laffy Taffy, but taking Laffy Taffy and mixing it in with the sweet tart material. And so you just mix the Lick-O-Made powder and a degree of tangy taffy, and that’s how you get chewy sweet tarts. Literally, it’s like three products remixed all together in 17 different ways. But yes, Taco Bell.
40:23
Again, very limited amount of ingredients, but the way you remix them is remarkable. And so that is, that’s a really fun way. I mean, it’s funny. When I was at Marvel Comics, had a president, there were many presidents of the company when I was there, but one of them said, basically all these books are the same. It’s just one guy fighting crime and like a leader and like five people in the team. was like, I get it. Like Daredevil’s kind of the same as Spider-Man, you know, but they are and they aren’t. But the way you remix them,
40:52
is amazing. But to me, again, like changing format of things, if you can find the right delivery system for the right product, it can be a complete game changer. I think when people are thinking about ways to innovate or ways to market, it’s a great way to consider differentiating things. An evolution of all that stuff, because believe it or not, I’m not gonna get into it, there’s a through line between sweet tarts and nerds. It’s a story. Without sweet tarts, nerds would not exist, I promise you. But I won’t tell the whole story.
41:22
But then nerds exist, you jump forward to 2020 and nerds gummy clusters, they didn’t just change the delivery system of nerds. There was a lot of formulation, the gummy, but the nerds gummy cluster has taken nerds from a $50 million a year brand in five years to a $900 million plus year brand. And that is a thousand percent increase in, no, that’s almost a 2000 % increase in sales.
41:51
in under five years. That’s a very dangerous game you just got into trying to do mental math on a podcast. Yes. Spelling and math are two things that don’t bode well in interviews.
42:06
Let’s remix our way. We’re going to wrap up. This is going to be a hybrid. We’re going to wrap up with rapid fire Q and A, but it’s also going to be a hybrid with segment. do sometimes called the unusual because there’s just so many unusual candies that I want to dive into here. So this is obviously candy focused. You couldn’t have seen that coming. All right. You ready for it? Let’s do it. All right. Let’s get wild. What would you say all time is like the most unusual candy ever created? Oh, well, we live in a world that
42:33
Unusual is like the rule, right? Weird brand collaborations, weird flavors. um But I’m gonna step back from the modern because there’s so many crazy things that are purposely crazy that I’m gonna step back and I’m gonna give you two. um And they are both from the same brand. They’re both from the Lifesavers brand. Lifesavers don’t seem so crazy and, you know, that they would do weird things. But in 1948, uh Lifesavers of America released a product called
43:01
You can say what I said, Pepo Mint, Spear O-Mint with the O meaning to… So everything that had an O-Mint. uh They released a product called Molass-O-Mint, which was the great flavor of molasses and mint. Which I thought was pretty crazy. In Australia, around the same time, the Australian Lifesavers Arm released a flavor of lifesavers called Musk. And Musk lifesavers are still made.
43:29
uh Musk is a flavor of confection in Australia and South Africa. If you’ve never had it, you know, and if you ever get the opportunity to try a Musk lifesaver, do it at your own peril. That said, someone had asked me what I thought of Musk flavored lifesavers and I said, it was akin to biting into my grandmother’s makeup. Oh, we can all relate to that. Very strange, right? It was like that. That’s the only way to describe it. There’s no other flavor profile that fits it.
43:59
So yeah, like it was just super weird super bizarre What was it? I just got the Oreo Thanksgiving dinner inspired Oreos, which was an online release uh And I there’s a turkey and stuffing flavor Oreo in that box and you can see it on my social media You can see me trying it. It’s terrible. It’s like a dog food food flavored Oreo I can’t believe well, I can’t believe that they made Thanksgiving Oreos. It’s just proof that anybody will will try anything
44:26
Especially candy historians. I’m with you. would would try that too. you have no matter how disgusting it is. All right. What? So category we haven’t really talked about, but chocolate. So like chocolate is obviously huge. One of the most beloved flavors or whatever you want to call it out there. What would you say is like one of the most creative uses of chocolate in history? Oh, I mean, look, we live in a really innovative time. People always ask me like
44:53
what’s the most innovative period in the history of confectioner chocolate or candy? And I would say there are really two periods. There are really the earlier part of the 20th century when everyone, like there was literally a chocolatier trying to create a brand in almost every town in America, or the last 20 years. The last 20 years, there’s been an explosion that has in some ways mirrored the explosion of coffee in this country, craft beer in this country, where you have a lot of centers of people doing in.
45:21
incredibly uh complex Formulations small batch bean to bar a lot of stuff happening here in Brooklyn in the Pacific Northwest Portland But there’s not an area of the country where someone isn’t doing something interesting with chocolate in the United States Gosh, there’s so many people like Mast brothers I mean people started putting you know hot peppers into chocolate probably 15 years ago Maybe even 20 years ago. So the flavor profiles of chocolate the levels of dark chocolate that we’re consuming
45:49
are at levels they’ve never been before. Certainly you have parallel development happening now over the cannabis industry, right? So there’s cannabis in, you know, that’s a parallel. I watch as closely as I can, but it’s harder to grab hold of that because it’s very segmented and balkanized a little bit because the lack of nationwide legality of it. So there’s just a lot of really interesting things happening. Because again, you can go into Whole Foods and you will find just a whole slew of $10, $15 chocolate bars.
46:19
and the range of ingredients, pineapple you’ll find in there, incredible high quality ingredients made with so much craft and care. know, it really is, if you want to become a wine connoisseur but for chocolate and you want to spend a lot of money on chocolate tasting, you’re living in the right period of time because it’s all out there. It’s glorious. It’s incredible. One of my favorite, and this is a little more pedestrian but still kind of exotic,
46:45
One of my favorite ways to consume wild flavors of chocolate and white cream chocolate or white chocolate, it’s not properly the term, but white cream, is through Japanese Kit Kats. I have probably tasted over 200 different flavors of Japanese Kit Kat, all manner of flavor profiles, and they’ve gotten purposely weird, but they’re always trying different things, different regional things. You know, everything from pineapple. There was a Kyoto grape Kit Kat, a dark chocolate Kit Kat.
47:14
And I thought, oh, this is gonna be interesting. It really tasted like a Hershey’s Dark had been soaked into a week old glass of wine for 48 hours. I was like, oh, this is fairly bad. But then I also tasted a ginger ale Kit Kat that was built on a white cream base and that ginger ale flavor popped in a way and worked in a way I would not have expected, but it was very much ginger ale. And so it very much worked really well. And so that has been a fun way for me to experience all these different kinds of things. But I just think…
47:43
Flood may not be the right word, the interests and the desire of people who really want to understand the craft of chocolate making, who really want to push the envelope, we are existing. It’s such a great time for that. There’s so much great work, so much great innovation, and so many interesting things being done in 2025 and beyond. It’s just an exciting time. You’ve clearly lots of history with TV and TV history. One of the most uh
48:11
It’s an episode we watched recently, but one of the most iconic candy related episodes of TV that anybody can think of is the Junior Mint from Seinfeld. And so I’m just curious a little like behind the scenes. like, like what is it about a particular in this, in this instance, it’s obviously Junior Mint, but what is it about a particular line of candy that is like iconic or unique enough to catch producers attention that like we could create a whole episode based off this.
48:41
I think certainly in my world, because I work almost exclusively on that side of it with period television, because that’s the only reason they have to, if you need to get something from contemporary candy story, just go down to Target or Walgreens and get it. But if you want something from the past, you come to me. And so I think a lot of times people are looking for that bit of novel nostalgia. The Goldbergs, for instance, it’s like, okay, this character is definitely the guy who would try to shove the whole pouch of Big League Chew in his mouth.
49:09
So that’s what we’ll have him do, that silly thing. And you know, and because the writers are nostalgic as well, so they want to touch upon that. At the same time, sometimes it’s something purposefully obscure. Something that will trigger a certain thing that is almost like an inside joke, right? Or like an obscure piece of music. Sometimes, yeah, you want to go with the known hits. But sometimes there’s this great song from 85, man, I want to include it. And it’ll evoke the right vibe without being so specific as to feel tired.
49:38
Without getting any spoilers, there is a brand, a snack brand, that is featured pretty prominently in this new front half of the final season of Stranger Things. I will not get into it because I don’t want to spoil it for people who have not seen it. But it’s something I talked about many, many years ago, and I was really delighted to see it mentioned. When I think about what they’re going for, they’re, yeah, they’re just going for, just they’re having fun with it and the weird nature of its name sometimes. You know, and the thing about, like, you take the Junior Mints episode. Junior Mints…
50:08
are old fashioned, they seem very harmless and staid, you know, they almost seem like something your grandmother would eat, you know, although they’re very good, like they’re still a great little product. So to involve them in a Seinfeld plot, you know, involving people’s bodies and things, I mean, it’s just, it’s a, you know, a body horror, I guess, you know, it is a fascinating conflict, right? And so it’s just like, okay, that’s gonna get your attention. I suspect if I told the story to the right writer, they could incorporate it into one of these shows.
50:38
There was a product very similar to Tic Tacs. They were really a knockoff of Tic Tacs. They were called Dinamins. Dinamins. And they came in a similar little plastic container. was wide instead of tall. And they were hot cinnamon dinamins. And I remember I was playing with a hot cinnamon dinamint, so shiny and red and colorful. And I was smelling it. I just wanted to see if it smelled like cinnamon without putting it in your mouth.
51:04
I accidentally snorted and it popped right up into my nose. I could see where that was going. No, yeah. And this is plot definitely for a sitcom. Pardon my language, trying to get that fucking dynamite out of my nose at like eight years old was not easy. And I was miserable. I had inhaled hot cinnamon. My entire sinuses were like revolting against me. Like my sinuses were just pouring out. And when it finally did come out, because it did finally come out of my nose.
51:33
but it was like a little white chip. had completely almost completely dissolved in my nose. But to your point, when is something useful? think it’s when, look, for nostalgia purposes, think you can use brands in television shows or movies to serve the same function, the hairstyles, the music, the clothing, you know, that the right cars do. It takes you to a place. It becomes part of the character, even if it’s subtle. It helps you establish time and place. But I also think it’s just, brands are fun to play with, you know.
52:03
especially if they’re a little goofy sometimes. What makes something good or bad for these purposes? I just think it’s whatever the writers come up with, you know, which is gonna make them giggle or make them think it lends itself to the thing. Like I said, without naming it, I think the Thing and Stranger Things season five is a brilliant use of a pretty obscure product, generally speaking. Not well remembered.
52:27
Well, clearly the more obscure and the more obscurely it’s used, the more memorable. in some ways, yeah. mean, look, I think the Eggo waffle thing was very, very good for them. But I think I think going obscure also has its time and its place. It’s almost like the more obscure, the more I mean, maybe there potentially is a smaller audience that’s nostalgic about it, but they’re like incredibly nostalgic about it. It’s like, oh, yeah. And it’s also it’s it’s it becomes more like an Easter egg.
52:56
You know, because we are, as consumers of entertainment and media, we are interested in learning more. So if there’s something, oh, you know what? I gotta Google that. Was that a real product? Was that a real thing? So that becomes the game you play, like a Taylor Swift album announcement. know? Why was she wearing the red shoes? Exactly. Like, I don’t know. All right, and then last one. This is the real hot seat, Jason.
53:22
If you could design a candy bar from scratch, what would the Jason candy bar have in it? I mean, look, this is something people ask me professionally all the time. Oh, you ought to come up with a guess. So think I can’t really answer that. What I would say is this. um If I was going to design a candy, I love wild design. I love color. I love wacky stuff. So if I had my druthers, I would create something right out of Willy Wonka, know, something that doesn’t make sense, that you almost can’t package.
53:50
There was a candy that the guy who invented Nerds Gaming Classes worked on for the Bazooka brand, like Bazooka Bubblegum. But it was kind of a chocolate bar. What the hell was that color? It was like Kazazzle, or it wasn’t Kazazzle, but it had a name like that. And it was like, literally, there were two different colors. One was like blue, but it had things that were like nerds of different colors. It literally looked like something like made up for a science fiction show. And I think that would be the kind of thing I would love to make up. know, just something weird that looked like…
54:18
looked like nothing that you should be eating, but that would be the fun of eating it. That’s the fun. Whether it’s different colored ketchup or kazoodle kazoodle, whatever. And something that if it’s successful when you’re done eating it, like your tongue turns purple, because that’s also fun. know that, and for it’s fine. I understand we don’t want to have a bunch of artificial colors in our food, but they are awfully fun for dyeing your tongue. They are. Well, Jason.
54:48
Thank you so much for sharing some of your historian and archivist background in the candy world. Really, really appreciate and just love the niche you’ve carved for yourself in this space, the delicious space. So thank you so much. And I know if anybody wants to learn more, they can do so at collectingcandy.com, collecting candy, your handle on social media. Is there anywhere else if somebody wants to learn more about you to connect online?
55:13
I mean, those are the best ways to see me online. You know, I think my at collecting candy is my most prevalent social media. I’m on LinkedIn. And then most Sundays, you can catch me on History Channel most days. I feel like I’m on all the time on Sundays anymore. I’m doing four shows in 2026 for them. So it’s very exciting. Yeah, I’ve got one new one coming up, but all my other shows are in like…
55:38
I think Food that Built America, got season seven, we got season four with mega brands, Hazardous History with Henry Winkler on season two. And the new one is uh History’s Greatest Picks with Mike Wolf from American Pickers. So yeah, that’s very collector based, which sort of I get to play in a different part of my passion, which is fun. Well, congrats on everything. Last thing, just one line, final thought, stage is yours. It could be a quote or a motto to live by as a candy connoisseur or whatever you want. Send us home here.
56:09
Ooh, I’m gonna steal a quote from Menlo Smith, the guy who invented sweet turds. You know, he isolated a sort of philosophical thing. He said, you know what, Jason? He said, is a choice. So choose to have fun.
56:25
I don’t know, Jason, that’s such a bummer, such a tough decision. Jason, thank you so much for sharing all you do, for collecting all you do. That makes sense, collecting all you do. And thank you, Wild listeners, for tuning into another episode. If you want to hear more wild stories like this one, make sure to follow Wild Business Growth on your favorite podcast platform and subscribe on YouTube. YouTube is at Max Branstetter for the video versions.
56:52
You can learn all things MaxPodcasting, the Podcasting to the Max newsletter every Thursday and about this podcast at MaxPodcasting.com Until next time, Let your business Run Wild…Bring on the Bongos!!
