Goodbye to Necco wafers?
Say it isn’t so:
Word that the country’s oldest continuously operating candy company might shut down has people suddenly hoarding Necco Wafers…
Candy stores and consumers are trying to get their hands on whichever Necco products they can get, the [Wall Street] Journal reported, including Mary Janes, Squirrel Nut Zippers, Clark Bars and Sweethearts, the popular heart-shaped Valentine’s Day candies. What they’re chasing after most, however, are the wafers. They are both storied and divisive, known for their unusually long shelf life and a recipe that’s been unchanged since the days when the indestructible candies fueled Union soldiers during the Civil War.
Those three dots in that first paragraph cover up the fact that I eliminated a deeply offensive part of the sentence that went like this: “…despite the candy’s unpopularity among, well, almost everyone.”
What? What??? What is this twaddle? How can a candy last since the Civil War, have people buying it and hoarding it on the mere threat that it might no longer be made, and be ubiquitous (at least, here in New England; I don’t know about the rest of the country), without appealing to lots of people? Not to mention bloggers like me who have written paeans to the stuff:
I loved them as a child, passing up more gooey treats for their relatively Spartan but still deeply satisfying pleasures. They were chalky but sweet. You could choose the challenge of sucking on them slowly or give in to desire and bite them quickly. There was something about the randomness of the flavors””their ever-changing order””that was especially appealing.
You could try to tell ahead of time what you were getting by gazing through the translucent (as opposed to transparent) wrapper. But that was cheating, and the words and logo made it hard to tell, anyway.
Much better to be surprised. Would you be lucky enough to get more than the usual number of the favored and beloved greens, yellows, and oranges? Or would the dread licorice make too many appearances? Chocolate was the best of all, but when NECCO yielded to pressure and put out the all-chocolate roll it was somehow too much of a good thing. The sport was gone, the game of it””and then, alas, my ability to eat chocolate was gone.
Millenials like the author may not like Necco wafers. But plenty of the rest of us do.
And I will mourn their passing, but I hope someone manages to rescue them instead.
I was never a fan. Certainly never purchased any. But then, I only very occasionally have much of a sweet tooth.
Almost every female I’ve ever known has had an inordinate, almost mystical love for chocolate.
Miklos, even chocolate is a target in the nature-vs-nurture debates.
As I said on the longevity post: eat chocolate and die happy.
NATURE
https://news.wisc.edu/curiosities-why-does-it-seem-women-like-chocolate-so-much-more-than-men-do/
“Auger, who studies sex differences in the brain, agrees that women have a stronger craving for chocolate. This distinction can be found as far down the evolutionary ladder as rats, where females also have a stronger craving for the blessed bean. The difference is probably rooted in the female’s cyclic rise and fall of estrogen and progesterone, Auger says.
In June, a new study showed that chocolate also affects brains differently after it’s eaten. Magnetic resonance (MR) images of brains showed that the hypothalamus was less active in women after they consumed large amounts of chocolate. Since the hypothalamus helps regulate food intake, this could explain why chocolate is more likely to reduce a woman’s hunger, or at least her motivation to eat more chocolate.
The study also found decreased activity in the amygdala, a key emotional center in the brain.”
NURTURE – or at least cultural socialization and advertising.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/well-good/teach-me/78098940/do-women-really-crave-chocolate-more-than-men
“With a big weekend for chocolate ahead, now’s a good time to ask if women really do have a special relationship with chocolate – or have they just been told they do?
There’s a mystique around chocolate and women that says we’re powerless to resist it, but is this to do with biology – or marketing?
It’s one of the questions asked in First Bite: How we learn to eat, a page turner of a book looking at the influences shaping our eating and how we can unlearn the food habits that undermine our health.
Female chocolate cravings are a classic learned behaviour according to author Bee Wilson, a British food writer and historian who says that while genes can influence food tastes to some extent, our food preferences are largely shaped by our environment. ”
NEUTRAL? – chocolate beats tofu any day
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/cravings/201410/women-and-chocolate
“So why fight it? Food cravings aren’t fully understood, but there are certainly psychological benefits to “giving in,” as long as you don’t overdo it. The types of foods we tend to crave can lift our spirits, calm our nerves and stabilize our moods. That’s something health foods ordinarily don’t do as well. Rare is the report that women (or men, for that matter) have cravings for stir-fried tofu or a steamed artichoke!
…
Chocolate and other fatty, carbohydrate-rich foods trigger the production of more serotonin. Researchers also say that indulging in sweet and fatty foods also triggers the release of endorphins, brain chemicals that help you feel calm. Endorphins are responsible for the “high” you might feel when you exercise vigorously, fall in love or eat chocolate.”
I used to have an office around the corner from the NECCO factory in Cambridge. If you were young, it was possible to get a massive case of acne on the days they were making the wafers just by breathing the air.
FWIW, I was a Necco-addict as a child, but find them a bit “flat” these days.
I’m partial to Boston confectionery for fruit slices. The Boston ones (not made by NECCO, I don’t think) are much better than the Canadian ones, but they’re hard to find!
Gotta say, if ever there were a candy made to be stockpiled in the event of nuclear war or the zombie apocalypse, Neccos were that candy.
Paul In Boston: I lived in Central Square in the 70s, a few blocks from the Necco factory, and I still remember the smell when I walked by.
Paul In Boston, 4:25 pm — Necco’s factory was near the east campus of the college I attended, and yes, one could readily sniff the Necco wafers in the air, especially in the morning.
I dormed on the west side of the campus for four years, so I never got the acne — at least not from sniffing Necco wafers.
By the way, for what it’s worth, betcha didn’t know . . .
NECCO = New England Confectionery Company
“M J R” is a modest chap. The campus to which he refers is MIT.
I lived somewhat northeast of Detroit & Windsor and I still remember the smell of Canadian Club when the wind blew strong from the south.
As a youngster, I learned how to make a Canadian Club Perfect Manhattan for my dad.
Memories……
Chocolate Necco wafers bring back memories of sitting by the campfire with my grandfather. Great memories of quiet times.
Loved Necco wafers…well most of them. The white, black and pink ones we usually threw at each other or put in the street for cars to run over. I’m pretty sure I saw some at the Cracker Barrel the other day so I will have to stock up next time I visit.
My favorite were the purple ones, LOVED the purple ones, but they were very close in color to the Black ones, which I hated.
I hope someone saves the Necco!!!
Lee:
I wasn’t fond of the purple ones, but I thought they were okay. They’re clove-flavored, by the way. But sometimes I had the terrible experience of thinking I was eating a purple and getting a black (licorice–ugh!) one instead. Quite the shock.
I too pine after a nearly unavailable food from the past. In my case, Sailor Boy pilot bread crackers. Back in the 70’s (1970s that is) my local Coop grocery store used to carry them and I grew to love them. These are about 3 inch diameter crackers reminiscent of saltines but not nearly as salty and also practically indestructible. I love them with peanut butter but they go well with almost any cheese, sardines, tuna. A nice slice of fried Spam on a pilot cracker is heaven.
They are still around because they are the state food of Alaska where they are much valued as survival supplies. Practically every fishing boat and bush plane carries them.
Here in the lower 48 almost no one sells them. The original manufacturer was bought out by Interbake but they only sell them in Alaska. You can buy extremely expensive imitations for preppers at Amazon and other online shops but they are not the same thing.
A few years ago I found out that the Winco grocery chain carries them in their bulk foods department. But the nearest Winco is about 60 miles from my home. Nevertheless a few years ago I put in a special order for about 20 pounds and made the pilgrimage to the Winco. Did I say they are indestructible? I am now on the last few dregs so I will have to prepare another expedition to stock up.
So Neo. Persevere. Seek and ye shall find.
My childhood forbidden fruit was Morton’s Honey Buns:
http://www.inthe70s.com/food/mortonshoneybuns0.shtml
While I haven’t made one for Christmas in years, I do wonder if Necco Wafers go away what will I “shingle” my gingerbread house roof with?
charles Says:
April 12th, 2018 at 9:38 pm
While I haven’t made one for Christmas in years, I do wonder if Necco Wafers go away what will I “shingle” my gingerbread house roof with?
* * *
Ah! That’s the most important question!
Alan W: They are sold at Cracker Barrel and Hobby Lobby around here.
AesopFan —
Your info about chocolate makes me want some. Also, I’ve been reading about the Mayans again, and they loved chocolate. So did my wife.
I myself, quite like them.
Don’t even know what a necco wafer is.
Ymar sakar:
Well, hurry up, cause time’s a wasting.
Anyone over a certain age knows, but I think younger people (and at this point, that includes just about everybody) don’t necessarily know.
Perhaps they are an acquired taste. But they’re a bit like flat lifesavers without the hole, at least of the mint variety. A bit chalky, and sweet, and flavored.
Sounds like those classic Japanese candies that they put on an anime show recently.
http://www.crunchyroll.com/dagashi-kashi
Funny. I remember those. Used to ride my bicycle to a shop a few blocks away that had a candy counter; and sometimes bought them. I think I recall that I liked the chocolate and licorice flavored ones best. Geez … 10 years old.
A middle aged cousin recently asked me what happened to “Snaps”; a licorice tube coated with perfume-y hard shell coats of varicolored sugar. Which may have been mentioned here as well, not too long ago. I looked it up, and many others are also wondering. Not presently made it seems.
Last Christmas I walked into a “dollar store” looking for a last minute something like a shirt box, and stumbled across a shelf of those colorful hard candies (about the size of marbles and just as tasty) … shaped like little lemons and raspberries and so forth, which your grandmother kept in a cut glass bowl. Some filled with goo, some not.
I had not seen them in over 35 years; though, my kid sister had mentioned a memory of them as set out on the ornate, carved oak, sideboard.
Washburn’s by brand name, it turned out.
Packaged in little one pound cardboard drums, they were being sold for a buck each. So I bought half a dozen for the hell of it; and then gave them away as a kind of spur of the moment joke gift.
Turns out lots of people remembered “Grandma’s candy”, and had liked it better than I did.
DNW:
I loved that “Grandma’s candy” stuff.
My grandmother always had some hard candy that she kept in a decorative candy jar (I have the candy jar now, but it’s usually empty). The best of all were some VERY sour lemon drops that were amazing. They were hard candy on the outside, lemon-flavored and sweet. But inside there was a soft center, only this center was sour. Really really sour, like a real lemon.
They were marvelous.
The only section of Pynchon’s “Gravity Rainbow” I ever revisit is “The Disgusting English Candy Drill” in which Slothrop, an American lieutenant in WW2, visits an English girl, Darlene. Her landlady, Mrs. Quoad, shares her selection of exotic English candies. It’s a few pages long. Here’s a highlight:
_________________________________________________
“You’ve taken the last of my Marmalade Surprises!” cries Mrs. Quoad, having now with conjuror’s speed produced an egg-shaped confection of pastel green, studded all over with lavender nonpareils. “Just for that I shan’t let you have any of these marvelous rhubarb creams.” Into her mouth it goes, the whole thing.
“Serves me right,” Slothrop, wondering just what he means by this, sipping herb tea to remove the taste of the mayonnaise candy—oops but that’s a mistake, right, here’s his mouth filling once again with horrible alkaloid desolation, all the way back to the soft palate where it digs in. Darlene, pure Nightingale compassion, is handing him a hard red candy, molded like a stylized raspberry… mm, which oddly enough even tastes like a raspberry, though it can’t begin to take away that bitterness. Impatiently, he bites into it, and in the act knows, fucking idiot, he’s been had once more, there comes pouring out onto his tongue the most godawful crystalline concentration of Jeez it must be pure nitric acid, “Oh mercy that’s really sour,” hardly able to get the words out he’s so puckered up, exactly the sort of thing Hop Harrigan used to pull to get Tank Tinker to quit playing his ocarina, a shabby trick then and twice as reprehensible coming from an old lady who’s supposed to be one of our Allies, shit he can’t even see it’s up his nose and whatever it is won’t dissolve, just goes on torturing his shriveling tongue and crunches like ground glass among his molars. Mrs. Quoad is meantime busy savoring, bite by dainty bite, a cherry-quinine petit four. She beams at the young people across the candy bowl. Slothrop, forgetting, reaches again for his tea. There is no graceful way out of this now. Darlene has brought a couple-three more candy jars down off of the shelf, and now he goes plunging, like a journey to the center of some small, hostile planet, into an enormous bonbon chomp through the mantle of chocolate to a strongly eucalyptus-flavored fondant, finally into a core of some very tough grape gum arabic. He fingernails a piece of this out from between his teeth and stares at it for a while. It is purple in color.
“Now you’re getting the idea!” Mrs. Quoad waving at him a marbled conglomerate of ginger root, butterscotch, and aniseed, “you see, you also have to enjoy the way it looks. Why are Americans so impulsive?”
“Well,” mumbling, “usually we don’t get any more complicated than Hershey bars, see….”
http://bella.media.mit.edu/people/foner/Fun/gravity.html