Now and Later
The corner-store fruit squares that started out jaw-breakingly stiff and only gave in after honest work — think Starburst, but way harder. The name was the sales pitch: eat some now, save some for later. Whether any kid ever actually saved some is another matter.
Now and Later launched in 1962, created by the Phoenix Candy Company of Brooklyn, New York. The name captured the entire pitch: a pack held enough individually wrapped squares that you could eat some now and save the rest for later — a thrifty promise that worked on kids and on the grown-ups buying for them. The candy itself was a square fruit chew wrapped in colorful paper, taffy-like but famously reluctant: stiff at the first bite, surrendering only gradually.
That hardness was the identity, not a flaw. Softer squares existed — Starburst most famously — but Now and Later demanded jaw-work and rewarded the effort, each square a small physical negotiation that stretched a quarter's worth of candy across a whole afternoon. It made Now and Later the value pick of corner stores and checkout racks, the pack you bought when the walk home was long.
The little Brooklyn candy went on to live one of the great corporate odysseys in the business: through Beatrice Foods, a pair of Finnish owners, Nabisco's LifeSavers division, Kraft, and Farley's & Sathers, before landing at Ferrara Candy Company in 2012, where it remains. The flavor wall grew along the way — apple, banana, blue raspberry, cherry, grape, watermelon and more — but the essential contract never changed: the candy makes you wait, and that's the point.
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