Good & Plenty

Good & Plenty

Good & Plenty is an American brand of licorice candy. The candy is a narrow cylinder of sweet black licorice, coated in a hard candy shell to form a capsule shape. The pieces are colored bright pink and white and presented in a purple box or bag.

Good & Plenty was first produced by the Quaker City Confectionery Company of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1893 and is the oldest branded candy in the United States. Warner-Lambert purchased Quaker City in 1973 and sold it to Leaf Candy Company (owned by Beatrice Foods) in 1982. It is now produced by Hershey Foods, which purchased Leaf in 1996.

Beginning in 1950, a cartoon character named "Choo-Choo Charlie" appeared in Good & Plenty television commercials. A railroad engineer, Charlie would shake a box of the candy in a circular motion, imitating a train's pushrods and making a sound like a train. Advertising executive Russ Alben wrote the "Choo-Choo Charlie" jingle.

The pink candies are colored with a red dye called K-Carmine, produced from the crushed bodies of the female cochineal insect. Current packaging lists the red dye as "artificial color (K-Carmine and Red 40)".

According to writer Judy Dutton and scientist David Sugarman of the Ontario Science Centre, the scent of Good & Plenty candy is one of those (with that of cucumber) that women find most alluring.