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Description
On reverse: 4 Hard Candy Tablet Cooling Conveyors, Beechut Life Savers, San Jose, California. From accompanying captions: "The newly pressed candy tablets had to be cooled to room temperature, or they would stick together like a lollipop when they were wrapped. The problem was handling them gently, because the cooled candy was as brittle as glass. But the companies that made the conveyors were used to handling steel nuts and bolts, and assumed the candy could drop from one belt to the next. They also had to replace the standard black rubber belts with food-grade white latex, lest they leave black specs of "contamination!" in the candy. The candy would have been less brittle, and could have been made by a continuous process, rather than in batches, if they added corn syrup, but repeated flavor tests had shown that corn syrup muted the flavor of the candy. At this time in their history, the company opted for superior flavor (I believe that they have since decided it is more important to have a cheap product than a well-flavored one. Modern Life Savers have a lot less flavor. Julie Pifer) The candy was formed into tablets in a machine with a rotary turret, turning out I forget how many tablets a minute--I'm fairly sure it was well over a hundred. The famous hole in the middle wasn't cut out. Rather the still malleable candy was pressed around the center core rod, and stamped with the Life Savers name."
Type
image
Format
Black & White
Identifier
18F362FC-0EED-468F-BEE6-559452127750 2014-33-5
Subject
Confectioneries Manufactures--California--San Jose--20th century (LCSH) Beech-nut Corporation
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