Whether you love or hate it, candy corn seems to fill candy bowls every year around Halloween time. In fact, each year, manufacturers produce more than 35 million pounds of the tricolored candy (almost 9 billion pieces).
Here are some things you may not know about the peculiar confection:
- Candy corn was designed to look like chicken feed
- When you stack up individual pieces, the candy looks exactly like an ear of corn
- Candy corn dates to the 1880s, before the automobile and the commercial telephone
- Many people believe that candy corn should be eaten in a certain way
- While almost half of candy corn consumers gobble the whole piece at once, 43% start with the narrow white end
- Another 10%- begin eating the wider yellow end first
- If you don't like eating candy corn, you can drink it instead!
- Wisconsin's Westallion Brewing Company rolled out their Candy Corn Cream Ale, which was "brewed to smell and taste like candy corn with notes of vanilla and cream"
- It's not just for Halloween anymore. Manufacturers now produce:
- "Indian corn" (with a brown end instead of yellow) for Thanksgiving
- "Reindeer corn" (red and green) for Christmas
- "Cupid corn" (red and pink) for Valentine's Day
- "Bunny corn" (white and various bright colors) for Easter
- "Freedom corn" (red, white and blue) for July 4