A candy reference in Mad Men tonight: Don Draper describes his father as a man who liked "candy that tasted like violets, in a beautiful purple and silver package." That would be Choward's Violet Flavored Mints, still available today. Violet mints offer "a very unique candy experience," as the C. Howard Company puts it. I keep a package in reserve simply to look at. It's candy from the dowdy world.
When I was a little kid (in the Mad Men era), Choward's lavender gum and violet mints provided two of the curious fragrances that seemed to accompany old people. Cigarettes and Sen-Sen, too, went with old.
Will violet mints now join Frank O'Hara's Meditations in an Emergency as a new object of consumer curiosity?
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Sunday, August 17, 2008
Violet candy and Mad Men
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comments: 2
A candy memory, but delicious (and you must ask Elaine if she shares it)- driving through Cambridge and the air smelling of chocolate Necco Wafers. The factory was there- just heavenly.
I remember walking by the Necco Wafer factory, but I don't remember connecting the sweet chocolate smell with what they made inside the factory. I guess my mental image of Necco Wafers when I walked by the factory was of the multicolored kind!
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