Candy Corn Was Sold as "Chicken Feed"
True, odd moments from history, told short and checked against at least two sources.
The story
(14) Before it was Halloween candy, candy corn was sold as chicken feed. (24) Around the eighteen eighties, candy makers molded soft butter-cream into farm shapes: pumpkins, chestnuts, turnips, and little kernels of corn. (18) Oral histories credit George Renninger at Wunderle Candy in Philadelphia with the three-colored corn look. (22) In eighteen ninety-eight, the Goelitz Candy Company started marketing those kernels as "Chicken Feed," with a rooster on the box.
(23) Back then, about half of Americans worked on farms, and real corn was mostly livestock feed, not everyday people food. (18) Even in the nineteen twenties, Goelitz packages still showed a rooster and crowed "King of the Candy Corn Fields. (15) What really happened? Your trick-or-treat bowl is old farm-country candy that stuck to Halloween.