Charleston Chew

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Miniature Charleston Chews.
Miniature Charleston Chews.

Charleston Chew is a candy bar consisting of flavored taffy covered in imitation chocolate. (Since the "chocolatey coating" uses vegetable fats instead of cocoa butter, it cannot legally be called chocolate.) Created in 1922 by the Fox-Cross Candy Company, the candy was named for the Charleston, a popular dance at that time.

The company was purchased in 1957 by Nathan Sloan who doubled the size of the production line before he sold the company to Nabisco in 1980. Although he did not invent the Charleston Chew, he did change the candy's original blueprint, chocolate-covered vanilla taffy. In the 1970s, he introduced such new flavors as chocolate and strawberry. Tootsie Roll Industries purchased Charleston Chew from the Warner-Lambert Company in 1993.

The candy is available in vanilla, chocolate, and strawberry flavors. At one time there was a fourth flavor, banana. Charleston Mini Chews are a bite-sized, similarly-shaped version of the candy bar, introduced in 1998.

In 2006 a spherical version of the Minis, about the same size as Milk Duds, was introduced. Charleston Chew has made an impact on popular culture, being referenced in an episode of Futurama. Eminem sings "And I'm still loco enough to choke you to death with a Charleston Chew" in Forgot About Dre.

Charleston Chew candy bars have been used to demonstrate rheology (the effects of temperature and strain rate on the deformation of materials) to students in university geology labs.[1]


[edit] Footnotes

  1. ^ 2004 "Deformation of Charleston Chew Candy Bars as a Rheology Analogue in the Structural Geology Classroom", Paper No. 145-8, Geological Society of America, Denver Annual Meeting, Nov. 7–10, 2004

[edit] References

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Confectionery products of Tootsie Roll Industries
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