The Charms Candy Company was a

candy Candy, alternatively called sweets or lollies, is a Confectionery, confection that features sugar as a principal ingredient. The category, also called ''sugar confectionery'', encompasses any sweet confection, including chocolate, chewing gum ...

company founded in 1912 and sold to

Tootsie Roll Industries Tootsie Roll Industries () is an American manufacturer of confectionery based in Chicago, Illinois. Its best-known products include the namesake Tootsie Rolls and Tootsie Pops. Tootsie Roll Industries currently markets its brands internationall ...

in 1988. It was known for candies including Blow Pops and Charms.

History

Walter W. Reid Jr. founded the Charms Candy Company in 1912. The company was originally called Tropical Charms, a reference to the individually wrapped square-shaped hard candies, which were one of the first of their kind to be individually wrapped in

cellophane Cellophane is a thin, transparent sheet made of regenerated cellulose. Its low permeability to air, oils, greases, bacteria, and liquid water makes it useful for food packaging. Cellophane is highly permeable to water vapour, but may be coate ...

. Tropical Charms was founded in

Bloomfield, New Jersey Bloomfield is a township in Essex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey, and an inner-ring suburb of Newark. As of the 2020 United States census, the township's population was 53,105, an increase of 5,790 (+12.2%) from the 2010 census cou ...

. The company name was eventually shortened to Charms. During

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

, the

U.S. Army The United States Army (USA) is the primary land service branch of the United States Department of Defense. It is designated as the Army of the United States in the United States Constitution.Article II, section 2, clause 1 of the United Stat ...

began including Charms candies in combat rations as a supplemental energy form. Charms candies would continue to be included in

MREs A Master of Research ( abbr. MRes, MARes, MScRes, or MScR) degree is an internationally recognised advanced postgraduate research degree in the United Kingdom, Singapore, Australia and Hong Kong. In most cases, the degree is designed to prepare s ...

until 2007. Over the intervening years, the candies came to be associated with bad luck; in 2007, the U.S. Department of Defense removed them from all MREs due to the negative associations many service members had with the candies. After the war, Walter Reid III, the son of the founder, took control of the company. The company was led by Reid III, Ross B. Cameron Sr. (Walter W. Reid Jr.’s son-in-law) and his two sons, Ross B. Cameron Jr. and Reid B. Cameron. The Charms Candy Company moved its manufacturing plant from Bloomfield, NJ to Freehold, NJ in 1973. The company eventually purchased and built a manufacturing plant in Covington,

Tennessee Tennessee (, ), officially the State of Tennessee, is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern region of the United States. It borders Kentucky to the north, Virginia to the northeast, North Carolina t ...

. In 1988, the Charms Candy Company was sold to

. With the addition of Blow Pops to their product line, which included

Tootsie Pop A Tootsie Pop (known as Tutsi Chupa Pop in Latin America) is a hard candy lollipop filled with a chocolate-flavored chewy Tootsie Roll candy. They were invented in 1931 by an employee of The Sweets Company of America. Tootsie Rolls had themselve ...

s, the Tootsie Roll Company became the largest lollipop manufacturer in the world.

Products

Charms developed a wide variety of confections. Tropical Charms, later renamed Charms, are square candies that come in cherry, grape, lemon, lime, orange, and raspberry flavors. From 1937 until the 1950s Charms produced pecan-filled chocolate bars called "25 Carats" made with

The Hershey Company The Hershey Company, often called just Hershey or Hershey's, is an American multinational corporation, multinational confectionery company headquartered in Hershey, Pennsylvania, which is also home to Hersheypark and Hershey's Chocolate World. T ...

top grade chocolate (at that time, Hershey had 3 grades of chocolate). The chocolate candy was discontinued due to the high production costs and internal problems. In the 1960s besides making other Holiday candy lollipops they also produced Charms "Jellies" and

Chuckles Chuckles are jelly candies coated with a light layer of sugar. They come in five flavors: lime, orange, cherry, lemon, and licorice. Each package of Chuckles contains one piece of each flavor. The candies are made with corn syrup, sugar, mo ...

Gum Drops. Later they created a peanut butter-filled hard candy in the shape of a peanut. On November 28, 1966, Thomas T. Tidwell, founder of Triple T. Co. Inc., filed a patent for “Method for making candy with gum inside.” Triple T initially marketed the product as the Triple Treat. In 1973, Triple Treat sold the idea to Charms, where it was renamed Blow Pop. Blow Pops come in

watermelon The watermelon (''Citrullus lanatus'') is a species of flowering plant in the family Cucurbitaceae, that has a large, edible fruit. It is a Glossary of botanical terms#scandent, scrambling and trailing vine-like plant, and is plant breeding ...

strawberry The garden strawberry (or simply strawberry; ''Fragaria × ananassa'') is a widely grown Hybrid (biology), hybrid plant cultivated worldwide for its fruit. The genus ''Fragaria'', the strawberries, is in the rose family, Rosaceae. The fruit ...

cherry A cherry is the fruit of many plants of the genus ''Prunus'', and is a fleshy drupe (stone fruit). Commercial cherries are obtained from cultivars of several species, such as the sweet '' Prunus avium'' and the sour '' Prunus cerasus''. The na ...

grape A grape is a fruit, botanically a berry, of the deciduous woody vines of the flowering plant genus ''Vitis''. Grapes are a non- climacteric type of fruit, generally occurring in clusters. The cultivation of grapes began approximately 8,0 ...

, and sour

apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

flavors (sour apple was introduced later and was initially round like an apple). Blow Pops became the Charms Candy Company's best-selling product of all time. Besides the Blow Pop, the candy company produced Charms Squares, Sweet & Sour Pops, Sour Balls and many other smaller candy products.

References

{{Tootsie Roll confectionery products Brand name confectionery Candy Lollipops Companies established in 1912

History

Products

See also

References