Original subtitles

[Narrator] 600 million pounds

of Halloween candy sold each October,

$2.4 billion of Valentine's treats sold every year,

and 1.4 billion PEEPS sold each spring.

But 150 years ago, [dramatic music]

the holiday candy industry didn't exist

and neither do the holidays as we know them.

The holidays were not a super popular thing

celebrated by everybody.

[Narrator] It would take a few daring pioneers.

Try this.

[Narrator] To invent a holiday candy industry.

He's trying to create his own market.

[Narrator] Bringing candy to the world.

They launched the entire American candy industry.

No one's doing anything like this at the time.

[Narrator] And redefining the way Americans celebrate.

[Beth] It was something new and different.

And a candy legend was born.

It's melt-in-your-mouth delicious.

The holidays would not be what they are

without these iconic brands.

[dramatic music continues]

[Narrator] Today, candy plays a key role

in American holidays

and the confection industry pumps over $37 billion

into the economy each year.

What the candy companies have been genius in doing

is creating this expectation of certain candies

at certain times of the year and during certain holidays.

Who can imagine Halloween without candy corn?

Or Christmas without candy canes?

Or Easter without the marshmallow PEEP?

It's hard to believe that there was a period

where confections were not centered around holidays.

Yeah, I mean to me,

the holidays are always a time for celebration.

They're a time where you can eat candy

as soon as you wake up in the morning.

And I think that's one of the reasons people

like to have these sugary treats

that remind them of their childhood

and their memories of the holidays.

[Narrator] But in the mid 19th century,

the confection industry itself barely exists.

You have candy sold in bulk at general stores

and it was a lot of hard candy.

Chocolate was a novelty.

If you did have chocolate,

oftentimes it was found more at a bakery.

Chocolate bars didn't even exist

and all candy was made by hand,

very different from what it is today.

Candy was a whole different industry.

It's almost silly to call it a candy industry.

A lot of candy is sold at pharmacies

and it's acting as a carrier for medicine.

It's a world of candy that was good for your stomach

or good for your throat.

So like has this sort of health halo to it.

Apothecaries were considered the original candy makers

at the time because they had a business reason

for making these sweet treats,

to mask the taste of the medicine.

[Narrator] It's 1847

and a young pharmacist named Oliver Chase

spends his days running his apothecary

and his nights experimenting with new flavors

for his throat lozenges.

He came up with this winning formula

where he took brown sugar, he clarified it with an egg,

put a few drops of peppermint oil into it,

and then knead it all together

along with the medication.

And the clientele would keep growing and coming in

and buying out all his lozenges.

And so you went to his store with an ailment

or sometimes because you wanted a little something sweet.

[Narrator] Soon, Chase begins to sell a new version

of his popular lozenges without the medicine.

In other words, candy.

But with electricity still in its infancy,

Chase is now making medicine and his candy by hand

and can't keep up with demand.

So one day he just said, why don't I automate this?

And that was really the next step

in Oliver Chase's breakthrough thinking.

Basically, he innovates this idea of a machine

that can create on a mass scale,

you know, and that just pour forth.

This was America's first candy machine.

It was a huge breakthrough for the time.

Oliver Chase was a scientist, an engineer,

but his brother Daniel was full of big ideas.

[Narrator] The brothers shutter the apothecary

and formed Chase Company,

the country's first automated candy operation.

Frankly, Oliver Chase's machine launched

the modern American candy industry.

Basically he introduced the whole idea

of creating mass-production candy, low-cost candy.

So you're buying a Hershey bar today,

you're saying thank you to Oliver Chase,

or at least Hershey is.

[tense music]

One of the risks that come

with any kind of inventive candy is the copycat business.

You might have your patent on your machinery,

but still other people are going

to start making similar candy or machinery.

[Narrator] To make sure they stay ahead,

Daniel's eager to grow the business quickly.

So while Oliver's in the factory making candy,

his brother Daniel is out looking for the next thing.

[tense music]

[Oliver] What is this?

Daniel one day day comes back to the shop

and shows him a candy cockle,

which is a shell-like candy.

And tucked inside was a note.

In Old England where these cockles originated,

they were used to give as little tokens of love.

So the Chase brothers took this idea of cockles

and created something they called the conversation candy.

They start printing on with a sort of vegetable dye

these phrases on the surface of the wafer.

And that becomes kind of this new idea

that they have about what they're

gonna do with this candy.

You had sports mottoes

in the shape of baseballs or footballs.

You had a wedding bell.

You had horseshoes that said good luck.

You had baggage checks.

You had coins.

[Narrator] The most popular

is the romance-themed wedding bell

with mottoes like married in white, you have chosen right.

In the 1800s, the language of love

was very different from what it is today.

It was long, flowery, poetic.

These romantic sayings were reflective of the times.

Dear Nancy is fair and rare.

My love is like a blushing rose.

Very Victorian, rather long winded.

At night it droops, in the morn it blows.

[Narrator] Based on the popularity

of their wedding bells,

the brothers turn their focus to another romantic occasion

that's just gaining popularity in the U.S.

The brothers are taking an approach

which was unheard of at that time,

and frankly, very risky even today.

They decide to market the entire production line

for Valentine's Day.

[Narrator] At the time,

it's mostly celebrated by a small elite population.

It was all about giving expensive gifts.

It was really only meant for very serious suitors,

and you had to have that display of spending money

to prove your love.

As Valentine's Day is gaining a lot more traction

in the United States,

chocolate is still one of the number one gifts given.

[Narrator] In addition to chocolate,

a rare luxury, suitors exchange ornate cards.

Valentine's Day is one of these holidays

with a lotta stories and legends

that circle around the origins of the day itself.

Some link it to the reign of Emperor Claudius,

who, in the 1st century,

orders the death of the man

who would eventually become St. Valentine.

And it said that as he's in prison

and awaiting his execution,

which occurs on February 14th,

he falls in love with the young daughter of his captor.

And upon being led away to his death,

leaves her a note signed, "From your Valentine."

[Narrator] Valentine's cards became tradition

in 17th-century England.

They were elaborately adorned and shaped like hearts.

Chase wants to offer up

a more fun, lighthearted alternative.

So he takes his conversation candy

and shapes them into a heart.

[Narrator] Long before mainstream greeting cards,

conversation candies could offer all Americans

a way to celebrate Valentine's Day.

Combining the acts of gift giving

and love notes in one affordable option.

Holiday candies really weren't a thing.

So for Chase to say,

let's focus all of our energies

and create a candy specifically for a particular holiday

was rather a large risk for him to take.

He's trying to create his own market.

[Narrator] But as they begin

printing classic love proverbs

on their new heart shapes, they discover a problem.

So they go to print them and they realize, oops,

some of the sayings actually don't fit on these hearts.

Well now they have this huge batch of these hearts.

[Narrator] It's a problem

that will lead the Chase brothers

to forever change the language of love in America.

[tense music]

[tense music continues]

In the 1860s,

the holiday landscape in America is unrecognizable.

Holidays in America in the earlier days

were still very solemn religious events.

I mean, they weren't like today

where it's a reason to bring your family together

and have a lotta fun.

It basically hadn't been marketed to.

[Narrator] The first federal holiday, New Year's Day,

won't be declared for another two decades

and paid time off is virtually unheard of.

Most of America was still puritanical.

Holidays were not festive occasions like they're today.

They were for family to have dinner, go to church,

and that's about it.

[tense music continues]

[Narrator] But in Boston,

Daniel and Oliver Chase are trying to cash in

on the burgeoning candy market

by doing something no one's ever done before,

tying their candy to a holiday.

But the problem is Valentine's Day

is just becoming popular,

so they're taking a huge risk.

Daniel pivots the entire business towards

this one holiday,

which is kinda crazy from a business standpoint

when you think about it,

because he's the only one doing this.

[tense music]

They cut their round lozenges into heart shapes.

However, they find that the long flowery messages

no longer fit.

The Chase brothers say, well,

we don't have time to make a new printing press.

So they had to come up with phrases

that would fit on these hearts.

And a lot of these weren't the normal romance language

at the time.

These are not poets we're talking about.

These are candy industrialists.

Ever...

Ever true?

Yeah.

Okay.

[tense music continues]

They have to take these long romantic sayings

and drop them down into very short phrases

like be mine or ever true.

[Oliver] This is it.

[Edward] They're rewriting the language of love.

[Narrator] Sold in bags of 40 for a penny,

conversation hearts in banana, cherry,

and wintergreen flavors hit the market in 1866

just in time for Valentine's Day.

When these hearts come out,

they're actually pretty well received.

What they allow you to do now is to give them out

in a much more lighthearted way.

You can give them to friends.

You can give them to your teacher.

People walking down the street.

It brought in a lot more fun

and a lot more lightness to the holiday.

Conversation hearts democratize Valentine's Day.

It was a candy for all people,

for all economic levels.

This sheer fact that it wasn't as romantic

to give a conversation heart

was really what made the industry grow

and become as iconic as it is today.

[Narrator] Following the success of their hearts,

Chase Company merges with the second

and third largest candy companies in Boston

to create one of the world's biggest candy conglomerates,

Necco. [tense music continues]

And in 1927,

Necco builds the largest candy factory in the world.

By 1906, they had developed the Necco Wafer roll,

the Necco Wafers that we know today.

And that just was an instant hit.

[Narrator] Over the decades,

Necco would put out iconic candy hits

such as the Clark Bar,

Mary Janes, and Rolos.

By the early 2000s,

their annual sales averaged $100 million.

[tense music continues]

The Chase brothers should be household names

that we know today.

Really, they started the American candy industry.

[Narrator] Today, conversation candies

are the number one Valentine's treat in the world,

selling over 19 million pounds each year

and bringing in over $22 million.

When you start seeing people handing each other

those little cute be mine and I heart you hearts,

you realize that these aren't just candies

and they're not just different configurations of sugar

in a fun little edible package,

but they are the memories we cherish.

[tense music continues]

[Narrator] It's 1898 and second-generation confectioners,

Adolph and Gustav Goelitz, have just pooled their savings

to restart their family business,

Goelitz Brothers Candy.

In 1893, there was a national financial panic.

And the Goelitzs weren't able

to keep up with their debt payments,

so they had to declare bankruptcy.

[Narrator] Hoping for a fresh start,

they move from Illinois to Ohio and rename the business

the A Goelitz Confectionary Company.

Cincinnati, Ohio in the 1890s

has a large candy industry at the time

and has great logistics

to be able to distribute candy nationally.

They basically started it from scratch,

not knowing if it was gonna work out or if they would fail,

like they had a few years ago.

[tense music]

They were making some traditional

old-fashioned candies like stick candies, caramels,

nothing really that flashy or exciting.

The Goelitz Candy Company was looking

for the candy that's gonna set them apart

because people are loyal to their local confectioner.

Candy was very regional,

so Goelitz was traveling around the country

looking for a new candy idea.

Gustav was the one who was driven and business minded

and very passionate about turning it

into something that people knew across the country.

Adolph, try this.

In America and Europe,

marzipan candies are very popular.

Marzipan is made from ground almond paste with sugar

and it's easily molded into all sorts of shapes and sizes.

But marzipan was very expensive,

so it was limited to the upper echelon of society.

But in about the 1890s,

a new form of candy

that is very similar to marzipan

called buttercream is invented.

But the difference is marzipan uses almonds

and almonds are really expensive.

And with buttercream, you can cut out

that high cost of almonds

and still get that moldable quality.

[Narrator] Most buttercreams come in shapes

of leaves or vegetables,

but Gustav believes what he's found is exactly

what they've been searching for.

A candy to make them stand out.

[tense music]

This is a guy who's grown up around candy.

He understands candy and candy innovation.

And when he sees the candy,

he thinks that maybe this could be something big.

One of the big attractions was the fact

that they were something that was really unique at the time.

Nobody had really seen them,

so it could really put your company on the map.

[Narrator] While Adolf isn't as convinced

this candy is their future,

it will one day bring in annual sales of 36 million

and Americans will consume over 17,000 tons of it

around a single holiday.

[tense music continues]

One of the most iconic candies I think

that anybody would agree to this

has to be candy corn.

[Narrator] It's 1897 and Gustav Goelitz

has just returned to Cincinnati

with a new buttercream candy

that he believes will put them on the map.

When Goelitz comes across candy corn,

he immediately falls in love with them.

One of the things that's interesting about candy corn

and really was novel

was its three different layers of color.

Not necessarily the shape, 'cause, again,

it's a straight up kernel of corn.

At the time, people were looking for things

that were novel

and I think he was really attracted to that multicolor.

[tense music continues]

[Narrator] It was invented a decade earlier

by confectioner George Renninger

but failed to take off.

George Renninger worked for the Wunderle Candy Company

in Philadelphia, and while he was there,

he made little pea pods and turnips

and also little corn kernels.

I mean, look at this guy.

We have the tricolor.

The white, the orange, and the yellow.

And it's a little bit softer than a traditional hard candy.

[Narrator] Now Gustav wants

to recreate the obscure regional treat

and bring it to the masses.

But they soon realize why they aren't more mainstream,

because they turn out

to be actually very difficult to manufacture.

So in the beginning,

it was more of this artisanal product

that candy makers were making by hand.

Because it had these three stripes,

the orange, white, and yellow,

that made it one of the harder candies to manufacture.

[Narrator] It's also incredibly time consuming,

leaving little room for them to make any other candy.

They would make these giant vats of slurry

of this like melted sugar product.

They would hold the vats over the molds,

they would pass the vat back and forth to one another

each time a mold came

and do this for each of the little stripes.

Once it starts to cool down, it's too hard to use.

So it's the kind of process

where everything just has to keep moving

and you have to finish things quickly.

You have this incredibly hot, mellocreme slurry

that you have to pour into these little conical molds

one layer at a time,

starting with the little white tip on the bottom.

And if you don't do it just right,

you don't get that perfect layering.

The Goelitz brothers finally finish

their first production run.

It's very challenging.

Their team is very tired.

They just spent a lotta money.

[Narrator] In 1898,

the candy that will one day be a holiday sensation

with 35 million pounds produced a year

hits shelves across the Midwest with the name Chicken Feed.

Back then, most Americans did not eat corn.

Corn wasn't that good.

It was a tough mouthful, you know,

it hadn't been sort of refined into a sweet corn kinda way.

Gustav was the one who came up with Chicken Feed.

This may not sound very appealing to consumers today,

but it would've actually made a lot of sense

in the late 19th century

because something like 4% of all corn produced in America

was actually being eaten by people

and the majority of it was going to livestock.

Back then, for most Americans,

corn was what you fed farm animals.

[Narrator] Featuring a rooster on the package,

the brothers hope to appeal

to the largely agricultural Midwestern community.

People fell in love with it pretty much instantly.

[Narrator] But while Adolf is content

to be a regional hit,

Gustav is chasing a bigger dream.

[whistle toots]

At the time,

they were building rail lines through Chicago,

there's more transportation

that's supporting the rise of these candy companies.

And Goelitz is right on the Great Lakes.

So then they wanted to be sending boatloads, literally,

of candy either out East

or rail cars full of candy out West

so that they could become a national brand.

[Narrator] Years before even Milton Hershey

has a national brand,

Gustav Goelitz hopes to turn Chicken Feed

into a nationwide favorite.

But scaling up production is far from simple.

Chicken Feed is really taking off.

It was bringing in a lot of money for the company,

but it was still incredibly arduous having

to move these huge vats

that weighed nearly 50 pounds over the conveyor belts.

There wasn't air conditioning.

The candy is cooked to 300 degrees.

That's hot.

Hey, fellas!

Get him some water.

Get him outside.

[tense music]

It was actually quite dangerous.

[Narrator] The brothers agree

that something has to change.

[tense music continues]

The seasonality of candy is interesting

because a lot of candy companies didn't produce

in the summer months.

It was too risky, it was too hot.

So they would shut their factories down.

[Narrator] Knowing they'll need to avoid summer,

they have a small window to cash in

on their best-selling candy.

The brothers decide to target Chicken Feed

for one specific holiday,

but not the one you think.

In the late 19th century,

Halloween as we know it today

wasn't really a thing in America.

[Narrator] It's 1901 and the Goelitz brothers wanna take

their regional hit candy, Chicken Feed, national.

But to do so,

they'll need a new approach to their production cycle.

Once they realize how difficult and expensive

and time consuming it is to make these candy corn,

the Goelitz brothers decide

to turn them into a seasonal candy

where they can sell out the inventory all at once.

Since they have no choice

but to shorten the production cycle,

they decide they're gonna make

this the next big holiday candy.

A little known fact is the Goelitz brothers

actually marketed it

as a Christmas candy.

Americans often think that Christmas

has always been a big deal.

You know, that we've always celebrated Christmas,

but it's simply not true.

In the late 1800s,

Americans were not as festive about Christmas

as we are today. [bright music]

Over the course of the mid 19th century,

Christmas really takes hold in state after state.

And finally, in 1870,

President Ulysses Grant declares Christmas

a federal holiday.

[Narrator] But it's still a far cry

from the Christmas we know today.

Gift giving was very, very limited.

A child would get an orange on Christmas Day

or a pair of socks that mom has knitted.

One of the factors in spreading these ideas

about how to celebrate certain holidays is print media.

America is awash in magazines and newspapers.

And that's how people are learning

what's being celebrated in Europe,

like how they celebrate Christmas.

One tradition, decorating Christmas trees,

first gained popularity in 1849

when Britain's Queen Victoria and Prince Albert

publicly decorated their tree.

First catching on with the British public,

it soon spreads to the U.S.

In 1889, the White House put up

their first Christmas tree,

all lit up, beautiful, decorated.

And I think this really popularized Christmas trees.

Candy makers started making the stick candies

into candy cane shapes

so people could decorate their trees.

Confectioners are making chocolate Santas

and companies even start encouraging consumers

to exchange candy as gifts.

[tense music]

[Narrator] Hoping to capitalize on the growing trend,

the Goelitz brothers market their candy as

the universal Christmas confection.

They depicted in all the ads Santa riding

from rooftop to rooftop on a rooster.

And presumably these candy corn

were going to be its, well, sort of chicken feed.

When the Goelitz brothers were just appealing

to their own market,

it was okay to be associated with Chicken Feed

'cause this was agricultural country.

But when they set their sights on a mainstream market,

they have to change the name.

They pretty quickly realized we're gonna sell

a lot more if we call it Candy Corn, not Chicken Feed.

And then people can understand

that it's candy meant to look like corn.

[Narrator] In 1901, Candy Corn goes national

in time for Christmas.

And while it does well enough to sustain them,

it doesn't stand out enough to be a major hit.

There were already quite a few candies

that were associated with Christmas.

The Christmas candy market was deeply oversaturated.

[Narrator] The holiday that will one day make candy corn

a cultural icon won't take hold for several more decades,

but when it does, the candy industry will never be the same.

[tense music]

The earliest precursor to Halloween is Samhain,

which is this ancient Celtic festival

that was celebrating the end of the harvest season.

The Celts would dress up in costumes

to kind of blend in among the spirits

that were walking among them.

In the Middle Ages, it became All Soul's Day.

Poor children would go door to door asking for a money

or food in exchange for prayers for dead souls.

Lots of people would bake little soul cakes

with crosses on them.

That was technically like the first Halloween treat.

[tense music continues]

[Narrator] In the late 19th century,

millions of Irish immigrants fleeing the Potato Famine

helped popularize the celebration

of Halloween nationally.

As Irish immigrants were coming into America

in the 1800s,

they brought this early version

of trick-or-treating with them

where people would go door to door

and threaten their neighbors with tricks,

basically hoping to get money or food in exchange.

[Narrator] By the time Adolph and Gustav's children

take over the family business in the 1930s,

the European custom evolves into trick or treating.

[tense music continues]

But kids weren't really getting candy.

It was mostly baked goods, coins, nuts, or fruit.

Not really things kids would be happy

to see in their jack-o-lantern today.

[Narrator] It's only after World War II

as the end of sugar rationing coincides with the Baby Boom

that trick-or-treating really takes off across the country.

[Michele] In the 1950s,

especially after suburbs exploded,

trick-or-treating became a pretty big thing.

The nice thing about Halloween and candy

is it's non-denominational.

Everybody celebrates Halloween.

[Narrator] Which creates a problem

for those handing out treats.

Kids begin wandering further and further away from home,

and so parents become less comfortable

with people giving homemade treats to these kids.

Adults who didn't want to spend the whole day baking

or scrounging up loose change

in preparation for these trick or treaters to come over.

They're looking for something convenient

and pre-packaged that they could just give

to trick or treaters on Halloween night.

[Narrator] Sensing the new demand,

the Goelitz company begins advertising Candy Corn

during the month of October.

During Halloween, candy corn was really a great solution

because nobody was making candy corn at home.

So if you got it,

you knew that it was manufactured.

So imagine you're a kid in the 1950s,

maybe last year you got some nuts and dried fruit

in your basket,

and this year you get candy corn,

it's actual candy.

You would've been thrilled.

And a candy legend was born.

[Narrator] Candy corn quickly becomes a Halloween staple

and the rest of the candy world takes notice.

Soon other candy companies saw an opportunity

to turn Halloween into a candy-centric holiday

and mass produced miniature candies,

marketed specifically for Halloween kind of followed.

[Narrator] Today Americans purchase

around 600 million pounds of candy for Halloween,

and roughly 20% of that is candy corn.

Other people jumped on the bandwagon.

But we can really thank Goelitz

for making the candy corn a national favorite

and what we know the candy industry

to be now around Halloween.

[tense music]

[Narrator] 500 miles away,

the son of the inventor of MIKE AND IKES

is about to transform Easter with a revolutionary candy,

which will ultimately transcend Easter

and redefine holiday candy altogether.

Bob Born knew that,

in order to really make a splash in the candy world,

you had to really come up

with something new and something fun.

So when he saw these, he was blown away.

[tense music]

[tense music]

[Narrator] It's the early 1950s

and Bob Born has recently taken a high-level position

at his father's candy company, Just Born.

Bob Born has some pretty big shoes to fill

when he joins the company.

He is really challenged to kinda grow this company

that has this legacy

of what his father, Sam Born, had invented.

Sam Born was a candy legend,

first inventing a machine that inserts sticks in lollipops,

followed by his invention of MIKE AND IKES,

which will one day become

the best selling non-chocolate candy in movie theaters.

Bob really wants to show that he belongs

at the top of the company, that he's a leader.

And pretty soon, he has a hit of his own

when he adds cinnamon to unflavored MIKE AND IKES

and he calls this new candy HOT TAMALES.

[Narrator] But it's been three years

since HOT TAMALES debuted.

And with bold candies like PEZ and Lik-M-Aid

making a recent splash in America,

Bob knows it's not enough to rest on their laurels.

He needs something new, something unique.

[tense music continues]

While he's looking for innovation,

Bob Born was looking

for complimentary confectionary companies

that they can acquire that would add

to the growth of their business.

Barbara, get me the Rodda Candy Company.

What he saw in the Rodda Candy Company

was their technology with jelly beans.

Jelly beans were a pretty logical choice for him

because the overall DNA of a jellybean

is really rather the same as MIKE AND IKES and HOT TAMALES.

[Narrator] Jelly beans also allowed Just Born

to tap into the now lucrative holiday candy market.

Jelly beans started being associated

with Easter as early as the 1930s.

I mean, they're the perfect Easter.

They're colorful, you know, easily displayed.

You can throw 'em anywhere.

[Narrator] In 1953, Just Born acquires

the Rodda Candy Company and with it,

their entire product line.

[Secretary] That's the last of it.

Thank you.

To Bob Born, while exploring

his newly acquired Rodda Candy Company inventory,

he begins to understand that there are these other products.

And he sees one that's existing called the Easter Mallows.

The Easter celebrations that we know of today

really came out of the Pennsylvania Dutch community.

And these were immigrants from areas in Germany

that were Amish and Mennonites.

And while they led a simple life,

they had a voracious appetite for candy.

As early as the 1750s,

Amish and Mennonite parents were leaving out candy

to their children at Easter.

And they were brought by the Easter hare,

which became the Easter Bunny.

[tense music continues]

By the 1950s, Easter is all about candy.

It's a candy bonanza.

We have the Easter baskets to decorate

and we have the Easter hunt.

You have to hide things for the kids to find.

But they have to be chocolate eggs, jelly beans,

or chocolate bunnies.

The public was already familiar

with marshmallow candies,

but they were mostly flat, molded, boring candies.

This was an exciting and fun new way

to experience a marshmallow confection.

[tense music continues]

It was something new and different.

You have the taste and you have the texture.

It's melt-in-your-mouth, fresh-made marshmallow

sprinkled with colored sugar.

[Narrator] Rodda designed the chick-shaped Easter Mallows

as an homage to Easter eggs,

but they never went beyond a local artisanal delicacy.

Easter Mallows at Rodda were made by women

who hand piped them with pastry bags

and it took 27 hours to make

and hand pipe these beautiful little Easter chicks.

You had to have your marshmallow cream

just the right consistency.

You had to have your pastry bag at just the right angle.

It took a lotta effort to make a little marshmallow chick.

[Narrator] If Born can figure out a way

to do what Rodda couldn't

and mass produce the handmade marshmallow treats,

he could revolutionize the Easter candy market.

He had been an engineering major,

so finding difficult problems to attack

and solve was really part of his DNA.

[tense music continues]

By the 1950s, parents organized Easter egg hunts

and chocolate bunnies had become a big part of Easter.

But nothing like these colorful marshmallow chicks.

[Narrator] Bob Born doesn't know it,

but these novel treats will one day be

the best-selling Easter candy in the world,

accounting for 22% of all Easter candies sold in the U.S.

But for now,

he needs to figure out how to mass produce them.

Bob wanted to monetize and expand

these hand-piped confections on a national level.

So he had to come up with a way

that he could take production from 27 hours

to a lot more profitable type of time period.

[Narrator] Born spends months attempting

to refit his factory to churn out the mallows.

He creates a machine that can actually make this,

but the machine isn't functioning well.

It's actually creating these deformed marshmallow chicks.

Not good.

[tense music continues]

[Narrator] If he's got any shot at getting them

on shelves in time for Easter,

Bob will have to reimagine one key factor in their design.

[tense music continues]

[Narrator] It's 1953 and Bob Born is struggling

to mass produce a new marshmallow

treat in time for Easter.

If they're gonna market these to the masses,

they need to come out looking great.

But each time they came out of the machine,

they were squished or deformed.

Bob Born couldn't really figure out a way

to make this 3D product in the factory,

and that was one of his very first engineering problems

that he had to solve.

The wings keep sticking on the line.

[Dann] Originally, the Easter Mallow

had little wings on it.

And that was the challenge that was presented

in automating this as a commercial product.

Why don't we just clip off the wings?

[tense music]

Bob's eureka moment was when he figured out,

if I just cut off these little wings,

it can be piped through the nozzle at less accuracy

and I can automate this entire process.

So whereas the Rodda Company would take 27 hours

to make one tray of their little marshmallow birds by hand,

they could make 30 individual chicks in just six minutes.

[Narrator] But they're still not quite

the icons we know today.

Bob Born very smartly decides

to change the name from Easter Mallows to PEEPS.

There's some conjecture that the name PEEPS came

from the two little beady eyes

that were printed on each marshmallow PEEP.

But PEEPS is certainly a lot catchier than Easter Mallow.

[Narrator] In the spring of 1955,

PEEPS hit shelves across the country.

So prior to the 1950s, Easter was all about chocolate,

but now there's a fluffy new alternative. Beautiful.

The PEEPS.

I don't think Bob Born understood

how big the marshmallow PEEP was gonna be.

It's incredible how he mechanized something

that was so hand done

and really kept a little character to them.

So he really took something that was difficult to make

and made it better.

They've become just an icon of the holidays.

[Narrator] Today, PEEPS come in over 45 flavors

and run the gamut of holidays

from Christmas to Valentine's Day to Halloween.

Just Born is the number one manufacturer

of marshmallow candies in the United States.

And PEEPS have been the nation's leading

non-chocolate Easter candy for over 20 years.

The marshmallow PEEP has really cemented itself

into American pop culture.

There's PEEP-eating contests,

there's PEEP diorama-building contests.

There's even a PEEP balloon

that is in the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade.

So we have this cultural experience related to the PEEP

that's above and beyond just consuming it.

If I'm going to eat a marshmallow,

I want it soft and spongy and straight out of the package.

Although apparently there are some people

who like taking a PEEP out of the package

and leaving it out so it gets stale before eating it.

Those people are psychopaths.

My way of eating PEEPS was to let it sit out

for a little while

so they got a little crunchy on the outside.

[tense music continues]

[Narrator] Holiday confections

are now a roughly billion-dollar-a-year industry,

but their impact goes far beyond the candy.

Once candy became much more part of our society,

they weaved themselves into the whole fabric of holidays.

You think of Valentine's Day, it's chocolate.

You think of Easter, it's the chocolate bunny.

You think of Christmas, it's the candy cane.

It has now become just an integral part

of our holiday celebrations.

These are literally candies

that are targeted and marketed exclusively

for those holidays and they're a bonanza in that moment.

They're able to sell enough

because they become so synonymous with the holiday

that they themselves or the holiday itself

is seen as empty or not fulfilling

if those candies aren't attached to them.

When you look at Halloween, when you look at Easter,

when you look at Valentine's Day,

they would not be what they are.

We wouldn't have those holidays

without the brothers Goelitz, the brothers Chase,

and Bob Born.

These aren't just candies.

It's the smell when we open the package.

It's the texture when we bite into them.

And because they're not there all the time,

it turns into some of the most special

and meaningful moments of our lives.

And, without question, takes things

like the little I love you hearts, PEEPS, and candy corn

from being amalgamations of sugar

into foods that truly built America.

[tense music continues]