Life Savers
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Life Savers is an American brand of ring-shaped mints and fruit-flavored hard candy. The candy is known for its distinctive packaging, coming in aluminum foil rolls of eleven pieces.
In 1912, chocolate manufacturer Clarence Crane (Cleveland, Ohio) invented Life Savers as a "summer candy" that could withstand heat better than chocolate. Since the mints looked like miniature life preservers, he called them Life Savers. After registering the trademark, Crane sold the rights to the peppermint candy to Edward Noble (1882–1958) for $2,900. Instead of using cardboard rolls, which were not very successful, Noble created tin-foil wrappers to keep the mints fresh. Pep-O-Mint was the first Life Savers flavor. Noble founded the Life Savers Candy Company in 1913 and significantly expanded the market for the candy by installing Life Savers displays next to the cash registers of restaurants and grocery stores. He also trained the retails owners always to give customers a nickel in their change as doing so would increase sales of Lifesavers. Since then, many different flavors of Life Savers have been produced. The five-flavor roll first appeared in 1935.
Life Savers was a subsidiary of Kraft Foods before being purchased by the Wrigley Company in 2004. In recent years, the brand has expanded to include Gummi Savers, Life Saver Minis, Life Saver Fusions, Creme Savers. Discontinued brands include Fruit Juicers, Holes, Life Saver Lollipops and Squeezit.
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[edit] History
Life Savers candy was first created in 1912 by Clarence Arthur Crane, a Garrettsville, Ohio candy maker and father of the famed poet Hart Crane. Crane was looking for a new "summer candy" to supplement his chocolate business, which slumped in hot weather.
Crane developed a line of hard mints but did not have the space or machinery to make them. He contracted with a pill manufacturer to press the mints into shape. The pill manufacturer, whose machinery was malfunctioning, found that the pressing process worked much better when the mints were stamped with a hole in the middle.
Crane called the new candy "Crane's Peppermint Life Savers", because they looked like miniature throwable life preservers. The ring-shaped devices were just beginning to come into use after the Titanic disaster.
In 1913, Crane sold the formula for his Life Savers candy to Edward Noble for only $2,900. Noble started his own candy company and began producing and selling the mints known as Pep-O-Mint Life Savers. He also began to package the mints into rolls wrapped in tinfoil to prevent them from going stale. This process was done by hand until 1919 when machinery was developed by Edward Noble's brother, Robert Peckham Noble, to streamline the process.
Robert Peckham Noble, Edward Noble's brother and a Purdue educated engineer, took his younger brother's entrepreneurial vision and designed and built the manufacturing facilities needed to expand the company. The Lifesavers primary manufacturing plant was located in Port Chester, New York. Robert P. Noble led the company as its Chief Executive Officer and primary shareholder for more than 40 years, until selling the company in the late 1950s.
By 1919, six other mint flavors (Wint-O-Green, Cl-O-ve, Lic-O-Rice, Cinn-O-Mon, Vi-O-let and Choc-O-Late) had been developed, and these remained the standard flavors until the late 1920s. In 1920, a new flavor called Malt-O-Milk was introduced. This flavor was received so poorly that is was discontinued after only a few years.[1] In 1925, the tinfoil was replaced with aluminum foil.
Noble promoted the candy at the cash registers of saloons, cigar stores, drug stores, barber shops, and restaurants. He had the candy placed, with a five-cent price, near the cash register. Noble soon began to create and sell many other flavors.
In 1921, the company began to produce solid fruit drops. In 1925, technology improved to allow a hole in the center of the fruit candies. These were introduced as the "fruit drop with the hole" and came in four flavors, namely, Grape, Orange, Lemon and Lime, each of which were packaged in their own separate rolls. In contrast to the opaque white mints previously produced by the company, these new candies were crystal-like in appearance. These new flavors quickly became popular with the public. Three new flavors were quickly introduced, namely, Anise, Cola and Root Beer, which were made in the clear fruit drop style. These did not prove to be as popular as the original four fruit drop flavors. In 1931, the Life Savers "Cough Drop" was introduced with Menthol but it was not successful. In 1931, rolls of Pineapple and Cherry fruit drops were also introduced. As the public response proved positive for these, a new variety of mint, called Cryst-O-Mint, made in this same crystal-like style was introduced in 1932. In 1935, the classic "Five-Flavor" rolls were introduced, offering a selection of five different flavors in each roll. This flavor lineup was unchanged for nearly 70 years, until 2003, when three of the flavors were replaced.[2] In the late 1930s and early 1940s, four new mint flavors were introduced: Molas-O-Mint, Spear-O-Mint, Choc-O-Mint and Stik-O-Pep.
In 1981, Nabisco Brands Inc. acquired Life Savers from the E.R. Squibb Corporation. A number of early mint flavors, including Cl-O-Ve, Vi-O-Let, Lic-O-Rice and Cinn-O-Mon were discontinued due to poor sales. Nabisco introduced a new Cinnamon flavor ("Hot Cin-O-Mon") as a clear fruit drop type candy. This replaced the white mint flavor Cinn-O-Mon which had recently been discontinued. The other original mint flavors have never been revived except by Wrigley (although a mint similar to Vi-O-Let Life Savers continues to be manufactured by C. Howard). A number of other flavors were also quickly discontinued, after Nabisco took over, in order to make the business more profitable. In 2004, the USA Life Savers business was acquired by Wrigley's. Wrigley's introduced two new mint flavors (for the first time in over sixty years) in 2006: Orange Mint and Sweet Mint. They also revived some of the early mint flavors (such as Wint-O-Green).
Life Savers production for North America was based in Holland, Michigan, United States, for many years, but in 2002 production was moved to Montreal, Québec, Canada. Significantly lower sugar prices in that country is the reason behind the move.[3][4] The company was headquartered in Port Chester, New York, where the distinctive former headquarters building (now apartments) still retains some Lifesavers signage.
[edit] Trivia
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- Wint-O-Green and Cl-O-Ve[5] (now discontinued) Life Savers are known for their ability to produce bright sparks when bitten in a dark room, due to triboluminescence produced by an electrical charge produced by grinding wintergreen or clove oil and sugar together.[6]
- Pixar Animation Studios animated many commercials for the company before Pixar became famous for its short films, like Luxo Jr.
- The South African chorus group Ladysmith Black Mambazo sang the distinctive a cappella songs used in Life Savers and Creme Savers commercials throughout the 1990s.
- There is an urban legend about the creation of Life Savers which states that the creator's daughter died after choking on a hard candy, and that the hole in the middle was included to prevent further death (thus earning the name Life Saver). This tale is often mistaken for truth and is probably more well-known than the real origin story.
- Brian Sandoval has done voiceovers for Life Savers.
- The 1932 Marx Brothers movie Horse Feathers features a scene in which Thelma Todd falls out of a canoe and into a river. She calls for a life saver and Groucho Marx tosses her the candy.
- Croc 2, a 1999 video game appearing on the PlayStation, Windows PC, and GameBoy Color platforms, prominently featured various large Gummi Savers as trampolines of sorts for the main character to vault over obstacles.
[edit] Timeline
- 1912: Crane's Peppermint Life Savers created by Clarence Crane in Garrettsville, Ohio.
- 1913: Edward Noble bought the Life Saver formula, renamed Pep-O-Mint Life Savers, and started Mint Products Company in New York City.
- 1921: The first fruit flavors were produced as solid candies.
- 1925: Technology improved to allow a hole in the center of the fruit candies.
- 1931: Life Savers Limited acquired Beech-Nut and the two merged companies became Squibb Beech-Nut Inc.
- 1935: The Original Five-Flavor roll of Life Savers debuted.
- 1981: Nabisco Brands Inc. acquired Life Savers from the E.R. Squibb Corporation.
- 1987: Canadian Life Savers business acquired by Hershey Canada.
- 1996: Canadian Life Savers business acquired by Beta Brands Limited.
- 2004: USA Life Savers business Acquired By Wrigley's.[7]
[edit] References
- ^ New Yorker Magazine, Feb. 28, 1925, pages 47–50.
- ^ Howard, Theresa. "LifeSavers changes its stripes Friday", USA Today, August 14, 2002. "Raspberry-, watermelon- and blackberry-flavored "O's" will replace the traditional orange, lemon and lime."
- ^ Frammolino, Ralph. "Workers Feel Like Suckers", Los Angeles Times, March 20, 2002. "Life Savers is moving its candy factory from Michigan to Canada, where sugar is cheaper, displacing 600 employees."
- ^ "Life Savers", NPR, February 21, 2002. "The candy's manufacturer says sugar prices in the U.S. are too high, and it is moving the factory from Holland, Michigan, to Canada."
- ^ EN Harvey "The luminescence of sugar wafers", Science magazine, 14 July 1939: Vol. 90. no. 2324, pp. 35–36.
- ^ "Why do Wint-O-Green Life Savers spark in the dark?", HowStuffWorks.
- ^ "Wrigley to Add Life Savers(R) and Altoids(R) to Its Confectionery Portfolio" (Press Release), Wrigley, November 15, 2004. "The Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company announced today that it has entered into an agreement to purchase certain confectionery assets of Kraft Foods for $1.48 billion. The transaction includes ownership of well-known, iconic brand franchises—such as Life Savers, Creme Savers, and Altoids—as well as production facilities in the United States and Europe."
[edit] External links
- Life Saver History Flash version time-line from 1912 to today.
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