A NYC Candy Maker Extraordinaire
If you’re a candy lover, you may associate the name Heide with Jujyfruits, Jujubes, Red Hot Dollars, Gummi Bears and Mexican Hats. They also manufactured a candy called Chocolate Babies, which were cloyingly sweet like candy corn with a slight chocolate taste. The figural candies had faces that looked more like Tikis than babies. In their earliest days, they manufactured a candy with such an incredibly offensive racist name that I’m not going to include it in this article. Jujubes in particular sparked my interest in exploring the history of this company. As a young adult, when I worked at Bronson Coles Photography Studios at the Lincoln Village Mall, my coworker and friend Merle turned me on to Jujubes. She told me that they were a great way to satisfy a sweet tooth, but relatively low in calories if you could eat just a couple. I tried eating just a few Jujubes, but my candy eating restraint tactics rarely lasted. To this day, I still love Jujubes and have a bright green t-shirt with the modern Jujubes logo that Jeff bought me. Trivia: In the 1976 film Taxi Driver Travis Bickle (Robert De Niro) buys Chuckles, among other things from the concessions stand at the adult cinema. He tells the concessions girl that he prefers Jujubes because they last longer. While the original jujube candy dates back to 1709, Henry Heide, founder of Henry Heide, Inc., was responsible for introducing his own unique version to America in the 1920s. The original flavors were lilac, violet, rose, lemon, and spearmint. Today, the flavors are so subtle that I sometimes just refer to them by their colors. The box says: violet, lilac, lime, wild cherry and lemon – I don’t detect violet, but of course, I am used…
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