Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/02/14/how-sweetheart-candy-hearts-ar.html
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I went into a diabetic coma just watching that gif.
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FUN ALT-FACT*:
In stark contrast with Sweetheart candies, all of the Necco Wafers the country consumes in a year are made in a single afternoon. Necco is contractually required to make Necco Wafers by an executive order signed by Abraham Lincoln. The entire run must be offered to the military for the “Delight and morale of our citizens at arms at times of war;” if rejected by the War Department (which has happened in 141 of the last 150 years) the run is re-wrapped and sold at a massive loss just before Halloween.
ACTUAL FACT:
Necco wafers, then called Hub Wafers, actually were made before the Civil War and were carried into battle by Union troops. That Ken Burns left this out of his miniseries casts a shade on the whole enterprise.
*None of the first paragraph is true.
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So much for the saying that the two things you never want to see being made are laws and candy hearts.
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Hub Wafers - cute name. NECCO (New England Confectionery Company) was located in Boston, the Hub City (a name Oliver Wendell Holmes coined in 1858)
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I wonder if corn syrup was part of the original recipe.
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I maintain that they were originally cast at a foundry in Coventry and sold to British Leyland as valvetrain shims for mid-70s Jaguars.
The specimens rejected for not meeting BL’s somewhat laid-back machining tolerances are sold to the public. Those in on the joke install them underneath squeaking floorboards, or hang them in budgie cages for beak management.
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Huh, I’m not hearing about the bit where they add the chalk dust to them…
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NECCO continuously produces them from late February through mid-January of the following year.
These things put Twinkies to shame. After the sun supernovas there will be NECCO wafers floating through the void of space. Oddly, I like them, but I’m a Yankee, wash them down with a juice glass of Moxie. Hmm, if it tastes good it must be bad for me??
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+2 for “beak management.”
Additional text to bring post up to minimum length.
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Perhaps this has already happened, and NECCO Wafers are not made but mined, dredged up from a rich vein of discs that were deposited on a young, molten Earth after drifting for countless aeons through the deeps of space. The last testament and record of a lost civilization, which poured its every effort to producing the disks in hopes that another world would find them, decode their secrets, and cherish their culture once again.
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I have a fondness for odd chalky candy. Send them all my way!
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I don’t know if it requires fresh product, or stale product, or flawed product, but I absolutely love these things when they’re “soft”. I’ll still eat them when they aren’t, which may have contributed to the partial state of more than one of my teeth.
edit: I would try at least an entire spoon of that batter without a second thought.
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Right? F-all the chocolate. I’m sitting here with a 1# bag enjoying the hell out of my V-day!
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Why people like this chalky, upside-down testicle candy is beyond me.
Seriously, screw valentine’s day.
