A Sweet Slogan
Back in the 1930s and ’40s, the candy industry promoted itself in some surprising ways.
I was poking around on eBay recently and came across the vintage retail display box shown above, featuring the mind-bending revelation that Butterfinger candy bars were at one point sectioned into bite-sized pieces that could easily be broken apart. Holy shmoly!
After I regained my equilibrium, I started looking at some of the fine print: “Rich in dextrose”! “Scientifically blended under laboratory control”!
And then I noticed the little graphic underneath the name of the manufacturer, the Curtiss Candy Co. Let’s zoom in for a closer look:
Hmmm — “Candy Is Delicious Food, Enjoy Some Every Day!” I like midcentury advertising and also like candy (I even have a vintage coin-operated candy machine stocked with M&M’s, which I do indeed enjoy on a near-daily basis), but I’d never encountered this slogan before. Since the slogan didn’t mention either Butterfinger or Curtiss, I figured it was probably part of an industry-wide campaign by a trade organization, much like “Pork: The Other White Meat” and “Got Milk?” (which were developed by the National Pork Producers Council and the California Milk Processor Board, respectively). The candy biz’s trade group is the National Confectioners’ Association, which spends most of its time doing stuff like lobbying against sugar tariffs and opposing nutrition-labeling requirements. Were they the ones behind the “Candy Is Delicious Food” slogan?
I did a bit of research and discovered that “Candy Is Delicious Food, Enjoy Some Every Day” was practically ubiquitous at one point. For starters, it appeared on a lots of matchbook covers, often with the same building-block “CANDY” lettering shown on the Butterfinger box.
Obviously, matches are used primarily by adult smokers, not by kids, so this slogan was being targeted at grown-ups. Interesting!
The matchbooks were a good start, but they didn’t indicate who the advertiser was, nor did they include any copyright dates. So I did a bit more digging and discovered that the slogan also appeared in an amazing 1938 photo of — wait for it — a dextrose truck parked on a Minneapolis street.
