Stick Candy - History

History

Stick candy has been around since at least the fall of 1837, when it was shown at the Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association alongside lobster candy. Stick candy was popular with both children and adults in the U.S. as early as the 1860s, and the selling of this type of candy (particularly during the carnival season in the warmer months) was described as being lucrative. One contemporary account describes broken pieces of stick candy being sold in paper containers, being presented by candy sellers to rural people as something special, and commanding a high price.

Candy sticks were the subject of an 1885 song called the "The Candy Stripe":

Oh the candy stick striped like a gay barber’s pole,
Was a luscious delight of my infantile soul,
Ev’ry penny I earn’d in my little palm burn’d,
Till away to the store on the corner I stole,
For the candy stick striped like a gay barber’s pole.

Stick Candy was the subject of a poem from the 1907 collection A Rose of the Old Regime: And other Poems of Home-Love and Childhood by the Bentztown Bard (Folger McKinsey). The first two verses are:

I want to go back to the Stick-candy days,
Before they made bonbons of choc'late and glaze;
I want to go back to the dear little shop
Where the little old lady sold ginger-beer pop,
And made little cookies with raisins, that went
Like lightning because they were two for a cent!

I know the green street where the little shop stood,
And, oh, the stick-candy that tasted so good!
Lemon and wintergreen, cinnamon bar,
Each in its round little, fat little jar—
I see through the galmor of childhood the glint
Of the sassafras, horehound and white peppermint!

Stick candy is also mentioned in a 1909 poem by Madison Julius Cawein:

First place that they came to, why,
Was a wood that reached the sky;
Forest of Stick Candy. My!
How the little boy made it fly!
Why, the tree trunks were as great,
Big around as, at our gate,
Are the sycamores; the whole
Striped like a barber's pole...