Laffy Taffy is an American brand of
taffy candies produced by the
Ferrara Candy Company, a subsidiary of
Ferrero.
The candies are small (about ), individually wrapped taffy rectangles available in a variety of colors and artificial fruit flavors, including banana, strawberry, green apple, grape, blueberry, watermelon, blue raspberry, and cherry. Rarer flavors include caramel apple, coconut, strawberries & cream, apple crisp, chocolate mousse, pumpkin donut, pineapple, guava, orange sorbet, and lemon raspberry. Discontinued flavors include fruit punch, mango, strawberry banana, peppermint, and hot cocoa.
The name "Laffy Taffy" refers to both the texture of the taffy as well as its embodiment of silliness: short, question-and-answer-style jokes are printed on the outside of each wrapper, such as "What do you call a cow with no legs? – Ground beef."
Some jokes are
pun-based, such as "What is Labor Day? – That's when mommies have their babies." Others are based on silly
word play, such as "What's an owl's favorite subject? – Owlgebra."
These jokes are usually sent in by children who are credited on the wrapper.
History
The brand was first produced in the 1970s by Kathryn Beich Candies of
Bloomington, Illinois
Bloomington is a city and the county seat of McLean County, Illinois, United States. It is adjacent to the town of Normal, and is the more populous of the two principal municipalities of the Bloomington–Normal metropolitan area. Bloomington ...
as "Beich's
ame of FlavorCaramels", though these were not in fact caramels but fruit-flavored taffy squares.
The Beichs later changed the name of the product to "Beich's Laffy Taffy", which occurred some years prior to the acquisition of the distribution rights and the eventual purchase of the product line by
Nestlé in 1984.
Laffy Taffy was originally advertised as having a "long-lasting" flavor. Though it used to come in thick, square-shaped pieces, it is now sold in thinner, rectangular pieces. In 2003, the
Willy Wonka brand introduced a variety called "Flavor Flippers", with each piece of taffy having an outer layer of one flavor and a soft center of a different flavor.
In January 2018,
Nestlé announced plans to sell its U.S. confectionery brands, including Laffy Taffy, to Italian chocolatier
Ferrero SpA, maker of
Nutella, for $2.8 billion.
Ferrero folded the acquired brands into the operations of the
Ferrara Candy Company and will increase investment in marketing into 2020.
Ingredients
Ingredients vary by flavor. The following ingredients are shown on wrappers and were formerly shown on the Willy Wonka website:
*
Corn syrup
Corn syrup is a food syrup which is made from the starch of corn (called maize in many countries) and contains varying amounts of sugars: glucose, maltose and higher oligosaccharides, depending on the grade. Corn syrup is used in foods to softe ...
and/or
sugar
Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double ...
*
Hydrogenated coconut oil
frameless , right , alt = A cracked coconut and a bottle of coconut oil
Coconut oil (or coconut butter) is an edible oil derived from the wick, meat, and milk of the coconut palm fruit. Coconut oil is a white solid fat; in warmer climates duri ...
or
palm oil
Palm oil is an edible vegetable oil derived from the mesocarp (reddish pulp) of the fruit of the oil palms. The oil is used in food manufacturing, in beauty products, and as biofuel. Palm oil accounted for about 33% of global oils produced from ...
The following are less than 2%:
*
Malic acid
*
Monoglycerides and
diglycerides
* Hydrogenated
cottonseed oil
*
Salt
*
Soy lecithin
Lecithin (, from the Greek ''lekithos'' "yolk") is a generic term to designate any group of yellow-brownish fatty substances occurring in animal and plant tissues which are amphiphilic – they attract both water and fatty substances (and so ar ...
*
Artificial flavor
*
Trans fat
Amounts of the following depend on the flavor, color, and size of each individual piece:
*
Sugar
Sugar is the generic name for sweet-tasting, soluble carbohydrates, many of which are used in food. Simple sugars, also called monosaccharides, include glucose, fructose, and galactose. Compound sugars, also called disaccharides or double ...
*
Egg
An egg is an organic vessel grown by an animal to carry a possibly fertilized egg cell (a zygote) and to incubate from it an embryo within the egg until the embryo has become an animal fetus that can survive on its own, at which point the a ...
References
External links
Wonka official siteLaffyTaffy Website
{{Willy Wonka Candy Company products
The Willy Wonka Candy Company brands
Brand name confectionery
Candy
Sugar