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Candy Corn Doesn’t Care if You Hate It By Jennifer Fumiko Cahill jennifer@northcoastjournal.com
C
andy corn is trash. Say it all you want; post it on every platform. Candy corn doesn’t give a giant gummy rat’s ass. For one thing, it’s been around and isn’t going anywhere. Candy corn was first manufactured in the 1880s, the same decade that brought us its wax-wrapped cousin from Atlantic City, saltwater taffy. Wild times. Go ahead and hate these vintage sugar bombs — they’ve survived wartime sugar rationing and two separate decades of low-carb diet trends. They cannot be killed by conventional means. Oh, you think it’s too sweet? Suck it up, Milk Dud. So are cotton candy, jellybeans and s’mores, the core team of seasonal American sweets. Too much is the point. To our contemporary obsession with thinness and LED-bright teeth, candy corn extends its blunt, triangular middle finger. The tri-colored fusion of fondant and marshmallow does not need an actual flavor, only the binding magic of carnuba wax and, like, six different dyes. With the exception of a regrettable foray into
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NORTH COAST JOURNAL • Thursday, Oct. 7, 2021 • northcoastjournal.com
Thanksgiving dinner flavors, candy corn has always had the popcorn balls not to pretend and to be only itself: frosting you can eat while driving or typing. Is it my favorite candy? Not by a longshot. But I have had a lot of sugar and I would like to fight. Unlike, say, a Look Bar or Good & Plentys, candy corn refuses to be shamed into the shelves of misfit candy only your uncle asks you to pick up. Instead, it waits. Candy corn bides its time until the school supply shelves have been laid to waste. Then, overnight, it crowds the shelves of supermarkets and drugstores, a wave of neon candy announcing the season since long before pumpkin spice was a twinkle in that Starbuck’s barista’s eye. Do you want some? Doesn’t matter. Look, there’s a bag in your cart now. Seasonal though it may be, candy corn isn’t out here trying to blend into a Martha Stewart arrangement of cream-colored pumpkins and reclaimed barn wood. No, candy corn is taking down the fall industrial complex from the inside, reminding
