History of Lollipops

The lollipop, a famous sweet treat that has been around in drugstores ever since I can remember. Where did this mysterious hard candy on a stick come from? The first incarnation of the lollipop was probably created by cave people thousands of years ago who collected honey from beehives with a stick. Not wanting to waste the sweet nectar, they  licked the stick, thus inventing the world’s first lollipop. In the 17th Century, as sugar became more plentiful, the English enjoyed boiled sugar candy treats and inserted sticks into them to make them easier to eat. The term lollipop literally means tongue slap, since the word for tongue is lolly in Northern England and pop means slap. You could look to the Civil War era for another early forerunner, when hard candy was put on the tips of pencils for children. As early as 1905, the owner of the McAviney Candy Company may have stumbled upon the lollipop by accident. The company made boiled hard candies that were stirred with a stick, and at day's end, the owner brought the sticks covered with the candy home for his kids to enjoy. It wasn't until 1908 that he began to market these "used candy sticks." Also in 1908, in Racine, Wisconsin, the first automated lollipop production was brought about by the Racine Confectionery Machine Company that introduced a machine that put hard candy on the end of a stick at the rate of 2,400 sticks per hour. Owners of the company believed that they could produce enough lollipop in a single week to supply the nation's demand for an entire year. Thus the modern lollipop was born.

Fun Fact: The “mystery” flavor in dum-dums is actually the combined left overs from 2 other flavor’s batch. So every “mystery” is a different new flavor.