Time Traveling Back to the 50s and 60s and a Sweet Tooth

7/17/2025

by Skip Cohen

While browsing through Facebook, I came across the picture to the right, which was posted on a Facebook page called Vintage Life. Click on the candy selection, and you'll be connected to their page.

Here's the fun of "old" candy...it's Throwback Thursday, and this takes me back to grade school and my Dad's business at the time. He was in the wholesale candy and tobacco business at his own company, Lake Candy and Tobacco in Ohio.

If a candy could be sold in a vending machine, Dad had it in the warehouse. Having so much candy at my fingertips gave me a different perspective on candy bars compared to other kids. It was just not a big deal, except ironically on Halloween, when I got to go out and "hunt" my own. LOL

Out of my connection to Dad's business, there are a few great memories...

The Bazooka Caper: It was third or fourth grade when I was caught chewing gum in class. The teacher asked me, "Are you chewing gum?" I'd been caught and she kept talking, "Well, if you don't have enough to share with the whole class, it's rude!"

I was prepared and thought my response was perfect: "But I do have enough for the whole class!" I lifted up the top of my desk, and there was a whole box of Bazooka Bubble Gum! Hell, I probably had enough for the entire school!

I felt unbelievably powerful - I'd caught the teacher in her own trap. For the rest of the week, I had plenty of time to think about my victory, as I cleaned erasers and the blackboards each day. If you're not old enough to know what a blackboard was, find an old fart to ask.

Old photographs bring back memories, and today, the TV jingles in our lives: "Choo-choo Charlie" from the Good and Plenty commercial, B-O-N-O-M-O...Bonomo Turkish Taffy...and into the 60s and 70s -"Sometimes you feel like a nut...sometimes you don't!" Almond Joy and Mounds bars. Then there were candies like Three Musketeers, Snickers, Seven-Up, Mars Bars, and candy cigarettes (I "smoked" the same brand as my mother!). There were hundreds more!

I spent a few minutes on YouTube and found four of my old favorites from television commercials, which are below. Saturday morning cartoons, except for December seasonality, were loaded with these candy commercials. It's just a short look in the rearview mirror today...but then, that's what Throwback Thursday is all about.

Happy Throwback Thursday!