Moon Pie - History and Origin

History and Origin

Moon Pies were first introduced in the Chattanooga Tennessee area around the time of the beginning of the Great Depression. Bakers there combined recently-introduced Marshmallow creme fluff with graham crackers to devise an early sandwich-like prototype to the Moon Pie. Eventually, chocolate was added to create roughly the final shape known today. The origin of the name is suspected to relate to the pie’s round appearance and may have been acquired back before chocolate was added, giving a color more similar to that of the moon.

Precisely how and when people began the custom of eating Moon Pies with RC Cola is unknown, although it is likely that their inexpensive prices, combined with their larger serving sizes, contributed to establishing this combination as the "working man's lunch". The popularity of this combination was celebrated in a popular song of the 1950s, by Big Bill Lister, "Gimmee an RC Cola and a Moon Pie.".

Since New Year's Eve 2008, the city of Mobile, Alabama raises a 12-foot-tall (3.7 m) lighted mechanical moon pie to celebrate the coming of the new year. The giant banana colored MoonPie is raised by a crane to a height of 200 feet (61 m) as the clock strikes midnight. Also, the city had for the 2008 New Year's celebration the world's largest moon pie baked for the occasion. It weighed 55 pounds (25 kg) and contained 45,000 calories.

An annual RC & Moon Pie Festival is celebrated in Bell Buckle, Tennessee, and a Moon Pie Eating Contest is held in Bessemer, Alabama.

On October 16, 2010, Sonya Thomas, a competitive eater known as the "Black Widow," ate 38 MoonPies in eight minutes in Caruthersville, Missouri.

Newport, Tennessee held its first annual Moon Pie Festival in May, 2012.