Charms Blow Pops

The gum-inside-a-lollipop trick wasn't Charms' idea — an independent inventor named Thomas Tidwell patented the method in 1966 and sold it as the 'Triple Treat.' The Charms Candy Company, a New Jersey candy maker dating back to 1912, bought the concept in 1973 and renamed it the Blow Pop. The pitch was self-evident to any kid holding one: first it's a lollipop, then it's bubble gum — two candies, one stick. The lineup started with flavors like cherry, grape, strawberry, and watermelon; sour apple came along later — initially molded in the shape of an actual apple — and the blue-raspberry Blue Razz eventually rose to become the best-selling flavor of them all.

Blow Pops became the best-selling product in Charms' history, and in 1988 Tootsie Roll Industries bought the company outright — a deal that made Tootsie the largest lollipop manufacturer in the world. (Keep the two pops straight, though: the 'how many licks' owl belongs to the chocolatey Tootsie Pop; the Blow Pop's buried treasure is gum.) Through the 90s the ads ran wall-to-wall in after-school cartoon blocks — 'That's a Blow Pop!' — cementing it as a standard unit of childhood currency: birthday-party favor, fundraiser box staple, the good thing in the teacher's candy jar.

The gum, it must be said, was never great — flavorless inside two minutes, half-fused to the candy shell at the seam — and no one cared, because the point was the transition. Blow Pops are still everywhere today, basically unchanged. Some products survive on quality; this one survives on architecture.