54: Chicken Feed and Halloween

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54: Chicken Feed and Halloween

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It’s the most iconic candy of the season — and it has almost nothing to do with Halloween. Candy corn was dreamed up in a Philadelphia candy shop back in the 1880s by a confectioner named George Renninger, molding a chewy “butter cream” into little farm shapes. Because 1880s America thought of corn as livestock feed, it was sold under names like “Chicken Feed,” complete with a rooster on the box. Each tri-color kernel was poured by hand, one stripe at a time, by workers called “runners” — and only in the cooler months, which is part of why we think of it as a fall treat.

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