In Popular Culture
- In the early 20th century, Pickaninny Peppermints were a popular Whitman confection. However, future Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall and, at the time, NAACP lawyer took issue with the name. In a 1941 article directed at Whitman's published in the Afro-American, Marshall urged Whitman's Candies to realize its racial insensitivity. Whitman's denied that the term "pickaninny" was racist and responded to Marshall by saying that it meant "cute colored kid." Despite this, the product was soon dropped.
- The company has maintained a longstanding tradition of supporting American servicemen and servicewomen during wartime. During World War I, millions of tins were shipped to American soldiers throughout the world. During World War II, women at the Whitman's production line secretly slipped handwritten notes of encouragement into candy boxes to help soothe soldiers' homesickness.
- The G4 spinoff of The Soup called Web Soup spoofs the Whitman's Sampler package with a segment called Mixed Nuts Sampler.
- Wacky Packages parodied the Whitman's Sampler brand as "What Man's Simple Candy."
Read more about this topic: Whitman's
Famous quotes containing the words popular culture, popular and/or culture:
“Popular culture entered my life as Shirley Temple, who was exactly my age and wrote a letter in the newspapers telling how her mother fixed spinach for her, with lots of butter.... I was impressed by Shirley Temple as a little girl my age who had power: she could write a piece for the newspapers and have it printed in her own handwriting.”
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