Toss Me A LifeSaver!
LifeSavers candy! Who doesn’t recognize the ring-shaped hard candies and mints with the distinctive hole in the middle? Sold in over a million locations across the United States, they’ve been a treat for almost a hundred years.
In was the summer of 1912 when chocolate maker, Clarence Crane had an idea. Selling chocolates during a Cleveland, Ohio summer meant hard work. In those days before air conditioning, chocolates often melted in the heat. If only, Clarence decided, there was a summer candy. To boost summertime sales, Clarence invented candy mints. He named the new candy treat, “Crane’s Peppermint Life Savers.”
Most of the mints during the early 1900’s were square and came from Europe. Crane wanted his mints to stand out. One day while buying flavoring in a drug store, he made a happy discovery. A druggist using a pill-making machine kept popping out small, round pills. What if, Crane thought, he made the LifeSavers round? He quickly found that the pill-making machine made perfect round LifeSavers mints. Since the candy was named LifeSavers – after the life preservers tossed to ship’s passengers during a rescue – he punched a small hole in the middle to imitate a life preserver.
In 1913, Mr. Crane sold the rights to LifeSavers candy to Edward Noble. For just $2,900, Mr. Noble founded the LifeSavers Candy Company where he produced the candy he called Pep-O-Mint LifeSavers. Mr. Noble used unique marketing tools to make the hard candy a household name – such as placing the rolls near cash registers. He also invented the tinfoil wrappers – later aluminum foil - to keep the mints fresh in their familiar rolled packages. All the LifeSavers were made by hand until 1919, when Robert Peckham Noble, Edward’s brother, invented machinery to increase production.
Originally, all of the LifeSavers were different flavors of mint – Wint-O-Green, Cl-O-Ve, Lic-O-Riche, Vi-O-Let and Choc-O-Late. In 1921, the candy company began to make the first fruit flavored hard candies. Early advertising called them the “fruit drop with the hole.” The first flavors were grape, orange, lemon, and lime. It wasn’t until 1935 that the first five-flavor roll was packaged. The original five-flavor roll included lemon, lime, orange, cherry and pineapple; flavor favorites that remained unchanged for over 70 years!
Today, LifeSavers candies and mints come in over 25 flavors with 12 varieties of rolls. More than 54 miles of LifeSavers rolls are produced each day. The top-selling flavors in order are: Orange, Pineapple, Cherry, Lemon, Lime, Wint-O-Green, Pep-O-Mint and Butter Rum.
Here’s a fun fact to know – When you bite into a Wint-O-Green LifeSavers in the dark, it sends out sparks! Why? The wintergreen oil in the LifeSavers is fluorescent – which means it glows in the dark. Biting into the candy sends out electrons that bounce from one side of the mint to the other and blue sparks fly out. So next time you bite into a LifeSavers candy, you can give your mouth a taste treat and practice a science experiment too!
