![]() The rumour was that Mikey's stomach had exploded while eating Pop Rocks and drinking his favourite soda. This went on until 1983 when the big rumour about Mikey from the Life cereal commercials began to spread. They flew off the shelves and everybody and their brother had to try them. You can not only taste their carbonated quality but feel it too! Pop Rocks became the cool new candy around. These retro candies are thrilling, as they pop and explode in your mouth. Pop Rocks Candy has had many copycat candies over the years, but none come close to the likes of the original popping candy, Pop Rocks. Invented by food chemist, William Mitchell. “I just feel lucky, and equally blessed.This explosive retro candy popped onto the scene in 1975. “I don’t feel like Willy Wonka,” he added. “Times are changing so rapidly now.”īut for now, this old-time candy company has found a way to persevere. “I have no dreams of it going to the next generation,” he said. I get showered with sweets here.”Īlthough the business has endured for so long, Gerald Prince has no candy-selling aspirations for his grandchildren. ![]() “It goes in the category of dream job, I think universally,” said Jessica Heatly, the company’s marketing director. So, what’s it like to work in a candy warehouse? One of the company’s best-sellers is, in fact, Sunkist Gems, a kosher candy that is commonly thrown at b’nai mitzvah children and couples called to the Torah at aufrufs. The site soon will feature a guide to which of the company’s products are kosher, Jon Prince said. The website is vast, not only in terms of merchandise, but in terms of historical content, featuring “Candy University,” a section that boasts nostalgic candy ads and commercials, and a candy timeline that goes back to the 1800s. “We’ve been selling retro candies long before they were retro,” Jon Prince said. Those requests were no problem for the McKeesport candy dealer. It has drawn the attention of some unique clients, including a well-known, upscale jewelry store in Manhattan that needed 130 pounds of rock candy to stand in for diamonds in a window display, and the producers of AMC’s 1960’s period-show “Mad Men,” who needed some Violet Choward’s Mints for Don to give to Peggy in a fifth season episode. That seems to be the case, as, launched in 1998, has breathed new life into the company. “My son decided the Internet might be the answer.” “It was time to make a move to another facet of the business,” he said. Gerald Prince, now 85 and retired, realized his son was right. ![]() “You either change your model, or the model becomes broken.” “I said, ‘Look, if we can’t get more business in western Pennsylvania, let’s sell to someone in Maine,’ ” Prince recalled. “But we’re flexible.”īy the late 1990s, Prince recognized that the business model in Pennsylvania was changing with the closure of many of the smaller drugstores and mom-and-pop businesses, the base of the McKeesport Candy Company’s clientele. “I’ve seen so many family businesses and small businesses not succeed,” said Prince, a Squirrel Hill resident and member of Temple Sinai. Max Mullen, a Prince cousin, and his family also had an interest in the company until the 1980s.Īlong with the general manager, Tom Griffin, Jon Prince has reinvented the way his family’s candy empire does business with an online presence, keeping it relevant in today’s shifting market landscape. The 86-year-old company, still based in its original warehouse on Fifth Avenue, was recognized last month by the McKeesport Chamber of Commerce as one of the oldest businesses in McKeesport.ĭuring the course of its history, the company was run by Ernest Prince, then his son, Gerald, and now his grandson, Jon. What began in 1927 as the McKeesport Candy Company - founded by Prince’s grandfather, Ernest Prince - has morphed along with the times into, an Internet candy wholesaler that specializes in hard-to-find and retro sweets, and caters to customers from the Pittsburgh Pirates to Prada to anyone with a hankering for a childhood favorite. Get The Jewish Chronicle Weekly Edition by email and never miss our top stories Jawbreakers in every shade, 15 varieties of rock candy, candy cigarettes (now politically correctly called “candy sticks”), Turkish Taffy, Necco Wafers, Atomic Fireballs, Black Cows, sour balls, wax lips, Zotz - more than 3,000 different varieties all told, and all in stock, ready to be packaged and shipped to customers around the globe.
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