Candy Cigarettes

Candy cigarettes date to the late 19th century, and for most of the next hundred years nobody blinked: chalky sugar sticks with a red-painted tip, packed in boxes styled after real cigarette brands, sold to children for pocket change. The bubble-gum variety upped the theater — each piece came wrapped in paper, and a sharp puff blew out a little cloud of powdered sugar. World Confections, Inc. of New Jersey grew into the largest US maker.

The controversy eventually caught up. Under decades of mounting criticism, manufacturers rebranded their products as "candy sticks" and dropped the red tips — the Popeye brand did exactly that — while several countries, including Australia, Brazil, Finland, Norway and Sweden, banned candy cigarettes outright. Research gave the critics ammunition: a 1990 study found sixth-graders who ate candy cigarettes were twice as likely to smoke, and a 2007 study of roughly 26,000 US adults found 88% of current and former smokers remembered eating them, versus 78% of never-smokers.

The United States never actually banned them — reports of a federal ban around 2010 were wrong; the law in question covers flavored tobacco cigarettes, not candy — though in practice they can no longer be labeled as cigarettes. They survive quietly on candy racks as "candy sticks," red tips long gone, a relic of an era that sold kids the full smoking pantomime for a quarter.