Company Info

It started out with a spark of curiosity: How many licks does it take to reach the center of a Tootsie Pop? This simple question has been intriguing Tootsie Pop fans since the classic 1970 Tootsie Pop commercial aired. There’s never been a definitive answer, so two of our female BlairCandy team members decided that just didn’t cut it. They wanted to find out how many licks it truly takes to reach that chocolately-delicious center.

We then asked our Twitter.com/CandyPam, Twitter.com/BlairCandy, and BlairCandy Facebook Fans for their guesses on how many licks it would take, with the closest winner receiving a whole 100-ct box of Tootsie Pops! We received over 25 entries, and excitedly kept our social media followers and fans engaged throughout the day. Believe me; the BlairCandy offices were all abuzz for the festivities that would take place later that night.

One of our male staff members decided to give it a go in the afternoon and see for himself how many licks it would take, but by the 20th lick, he bit right into the lollipop – instantly disqualified! Typical! It was up to our two tons-of-fun BlairCandy ladies to set the new standard on how many licks it would take til they reached that chocolate center. To keep it fair, as the size of each Tootsie Pop can vary, as well as the lick swipes you take, we decided to average their total amounts together. Next came deciding on the perfect flavor – Grape for one and Banana for the other!

The time had come. They both took a gulp of water, and started licking their Tootsie Pops. The first 50 licks were a cinch, but their jaws started to twinge a bit as the licks progressed. For the grape lollipop, 50 licks went by…100 licks went by…121, 122, and 123 it was! But oh no! The banana lollipop was a bit of a difficult creation. 100 licks, 200 licks, finally 300 licks and it was called as a win. Average the two ladies together and…

211.5 Licks To Reach The Center Of A Tootsie Pop!

Making our winner…Keith S., who guessed via Facebook that it would take 227.4 Licks! Congratulations Keith, and enjoy your prize of 100 Tootsie Pops!

Our two BlairCandy girls were so excited to receive the following award from Tootsie.com:

It was definitely an event we’ll all remember here at BlairCandy.com, and we’ll certainly keep that healthy dose of curiosity going! After all, don’t settle for what someone else says – find out yourself!

So tell us, will you try the Tootsie Pop challenge? How many licks did it take you?

At Blair Candy, we have been working to improve the eco-friendliness of our business, and we’re excited to announce that a greener Blair is now in full swing. We have always found our French Burnt Peanuts a tastier side of our company than our packing peanuts, but we weren’t sure how to work around their necessity for helping your candy and snacks arrive safely…until now! Planet-friendly packing paper is what you’ll now find inside that box, as well as delicious delights, of course. We do still rely on packing peanuts for a small selection of heavier orders, but our Big Green Paper Packing Machine is now the hardest working piece of equipment in the warehouse, sending 60% recycled paper your way instead of a pile o’ peanuts. And what better holiday to really roll out our new packing material with than St. Patrick’s Day!

Green candy packed with ‘green’ paper…can it get any greener? Actually, it can get less green, by saving you some green! We’re offering 10% off ALL OUR CANDY in celebration of St. Patrick’s Day (and the BGPPM) now through March 1, 2010. The Gummy Candy will seem gummier, the Lollipops lolli-poppier, the Jolly Ranchers even jollier, because saving money on something as fabulous as candy packs some power. And of course, you’ll want to get your hands on the gold at the end of this reduced price rainbow – St. Patrick’s Day Candy! We have Shamrock Bubble Gum Coins, Green Apple Tootsie Frooties, Mean Green Blow Pops, and so much more. The Luck O’ The Irish is with your wallet every click of the way, saving you 10% here, 10% there, 10% candy everywhere! Sorry…I get excited. This *is* sugar and a sale we’re talking about. Who knew green could taste sooooo good?!

Before I go, I’d like to leave you with a favorite Irish saying – “The future is not ours to know, and it may never be – so let us live and give our best and give it lavishly!”. I’m no expert, but I’m pretty sure that means we should eat more candy.

You may have noticed a few fantastically fun characters hanging around the Blair Candy site, and we wanted to formally introduce you to our new friends. The man behind the mask is the one-and-only Captain Candy, protector of all things decidedly delicious! His favorite job at Blair Candy is choosing his Candy Deal Of The Day! from our extensive candy collection. And the magic candy bar riding duo is BC and his cute-and-cuddly sidekick Goober, a terrific team whose love of sweets is only surpassed by their own sweetness! These three seem to travel together, and we couldn’t be happier that they found their way to our door. A smile is never far away when Captain Candy, BC and Goober sweep in, and we’d love for you to come to know them as well as we have. They’d love it, too, and have shared some fun facts about themselves! Let’s take a peek, shall we?

Name: Captain Candy! (Exclamation point optional, but I think it lends a certain something, don’t you?)
Favorite Color: Purple. Grape candy is usually purple. How delicious is grape candy? So delicious! Sorry, I got sidetracked. Back to the form…
Favorite Quote: “Research tells us fourteen out of any ten individuals likes chocolate.” – Sandra Boynton
Favorite Date Location: Love At First Bite, Berkeley, CA (Cupcakes, cupcakes, cupcaaaaaakes! Oh yeah, form. Sorry. CUPCAAAKES! Hehe.)
Favorite Piece Of Furniture: Captain’s Chair
Favorite Song: Pour Some Sugar On Me – Def Leppard
Favorite Book: Candy and Me: A Girl’s Tale of Life, Love, and Sugar – Hilary Liftin
Favorite Snack: Charms Cotton Candy Lollipops

Name: BC
Favorite Color: Brown and White together – like my best friend Goober!
Favorite Song: On the Good Ship Lollipop
Favorite Book: BC Mambo – Erik Craddock
Favorite Snack: Marshmallow Candy Cones
Favorite Canadian Province: British Columbia (B.C.)

Name: Goober
Favorite Color: Bone White
Favorite Quote: “Whoever said you can’t buy happiness forgot little puppies.” – Gene Hill
Favorite Song: Dogs Are The Best People – The Fauves
Favorite Movie: Dog Day Afternoon (I love Pacino!)
Favorite Snack: Doggie Donuts

Captain Candy, BC and Goober are sure to back to the blog soon, and we know you’ll come to consider them friends. But if you have any questions for them in the meantime that they haven’t answered, ask in the comments and we’ll get those to them ASAP!

We understand the enticement of free shipping – it even has the word ‘free’ right in there, and who doesn’t love free things?! But one of the things we pride ourselves on at Blair Candy is being fair to our customers, and we don’t think it’s fair to raise our prices to absorb shipping costs just so we can give you something for ‘free’ when in fact, you’d be paying for it. The simple truth is that shipping costs money. We wish as much as you did that it didn’t, but we aren’t going to try to ‘sugarcoat’ the truth. We sell Moon Pies, not white lies!

Blair Candy was born with the old-fashioned corner candy store in mind. We wanted to bring everyone back to the way it felt to have a quarter in your pocket and an ‘Open’ sign on the candy store door. A time when there was a smiling face behind a glass case full of Bottle Caps and Boston Baked Beans. A time when the day was made the best it could be with a little brown bag full of treats in one hand, a bottle of Coke in the other, and a slow walk home in the summer with friends.

No, we aren’t magicians, and we can’t turn back time! We also can’t show every customer that we are indeed smiling as we pack up their box of Penny Candy memories. But we can be 100% honest about costs. Our candy prices are for the candy. Our shipping prices are for the shipping. And we’ll always be more interested in stretching taffy than the truth!

Thanks for shopping with Blair Candy, where we appreciate not only your business, but also the unspoken memories you share with each order. Where some companies might see a list of products to pack in a box, we see someone who never lost a taste for the wonders of childhood. Sure, you’re cleverly disguised as a grown-up now, but to us you’ll always be a kid with grass-stained knees and a Kool-Aid smile. 🙂

My favorite candy choices seem to be just like my favorite cartoons. They always bring a smile to my face or a burst of laughter to even my most trying days!  As a kid,  I’d love to sit and watch Top Cat, Underdog, Scooby Doo, Popeye  and even Atom Ant, all while eating some of my favorite candy. I guess that’s why when we decided to take our candy selections online to sell in 2000, I had the website built in cartoon mode.

Yes, that was almost 10 years ago Blair Candy not only went online, but turned cartoon too! Not only has our website changed the past 10 years, but the candy and cartoons have too!  One thing that hasn’t changed is the smile and laughter our sweet treats bring!

Even though we can’t take any credit for the goodtimes Underdog , Porky Pig or even Tom and Jerry put on our faces, we can for the sweet treats some of you enjoyed while watching them.

There was nothing better than watching Popeye squeeze that gross looking spinich out of that can all while I was allowed to eat a bag of Sugar Babies or watch Mighty Mouse save the day as I tried and tried to get to the chocolate center of my Tootsie Pop lol.

Our new candy website you see today was thought out,  built and designed just like the Cartoonists, Ilustrators, Programmers and Producers use to build a cartoon. That’s why we feel this is the sweetest  one yet!

The Cartoonist and Illustrators at  EY Studio’s brought our candy chocies to life and even added a special super hero of our own, that’s going to bring you sweet special deals everyday.

Our Programmers and Producers from Solid Cactus made this website as easy to use as blowing a bubble with your favorite bubble gum or as simple as finding your favorite Nostalgic Candy on our website! I guess that’s why Yogi told us they are all… “Smarter than the average bear” ! lol

We hope you all have as much fun shopping and eating, as we all did making it!

Th-th-th-that’s all folks! …..Enjoy!

It’s been a very busy 2 months here at Blair Candy! It’s time for our online candy store to be redesigned. I’ve been through 4 redesigns since 2000 and this flip is a step above the rest!
For those of you who have never had the opportunity to undertake a challenge like this, it’s sort of like completely gutting the inside of your house or office, or building a new home from the ground up. It takes a lot of thought and work to pull it all together.

Yes, a new website design is just like flipping or decorating your home or office. You pick new colors to paint the walls (background), choose new furniture (programs), new pictures (products), but no matter what you do or buy for either, it all must flow together. This makes it easy to maneuver so no one trips and falls or gets lost from room to room.

You would think, considering this is the 4th redesign we have been through, this flip and the navigation choices should be pretty standard….
Oh if it would only be that easy lol

Just like what’s hot and what’s not in the carpet business or the candy bar business; Things change! As I’ve looked over many website for ideas, I noticed many seem to be making sections now called shop by brand or manufacturer. I was confused if this would work for us? Would I be wasting a lot of space on something that many might not know anyway?

Would the average candy lover know to click on the Tootsie Roll brand to find  Black Crows, Caramel Apple Lollipops or Junior Mints? How about those looking for a Clark Baror Candy Buttons? Would they know to click on the Necco brand for those?

I’ve grown up in this family candy business and have sat behind this desk for 28 years and I still don’t know who makes several of these candy items we sell. I often find myself cheating and looking in our in-house computer system to match up a novelty candy item to the manufacturer with the branding behind them.

It’s not like we are selling cars by GM or TV’S by Sony! Many of our manufacturers have so many different brands under their belts, it gets confusing.

So do I keep the sections lined up like we always have and let people search for gummy candy, candy bars and lollipops, or do we also give them a little more to think about? Will the average person know that Tootsie Roll Inc, also owns and manufactures a lot more than their name sake, Tootsie Rolls?

I still have many new colors, programs and products to add to this redesign, but you can be sure this flip is being designed with our sweet customers in mind!

It’s been a fun two weeks watching all the videos that were sent in for our Sing For Free Candy Contest. We appreciate the time everyone took to make their video! We judged each video on originality, creativity and by the fun they looked like they had making them. Even though this candy contest called for only 3 winners, we desided to sweeten the pot and give some special singers prizes aswell! You can view them all below.

                           Congratulations To The Winners below

First Place $250 Gift Certificate  “The Gum Drop Girls” from Willow Springs, IL. These sweet little girls  dressed up for the part, made props, sang their hearts out and danced to the beat. Ranging from age 5  to 8, their mom told us they practiced many days for this. Catherine, Sierra, Ceara and Caitlin congratulations, you can pick a lot of candy!

Second Place $50 Gift Certificate – Cindy Ficarotta from Levittown, PA. Cindy has a very creative side and did one on the coolest computer generated entry we have ever seen! Congratulations Cindy on a job well done!

Third Place $25 Gift Certificate –  “The Candy Wrappers” from Shirley, MA –  These 3 young ladies, put a lot of thought into these lyrics  and used their “own” creativity to rap their way into the winners of a $25 gift certificate to spend how they please. Congratulations girls!

Now on to some very special candy videos that we felt needed reconginized in a sweet special way too!

Annika from Chicago –  this adorable sweet little girl, caught everyone’s attention here, so we’re sending her a special box full of candy treats! We love her smiling little face and sweet voice! We think you will agree! You can watch her sing right here

Kailyn and Kyle from Marina CA – This brother and sister duo were too sweet on the eyes of many of us here, so we’re sending them a box of goodies too!

OK this one gets our family award! This singing family, gave it there all and we enjoyed it! Congratulations Mike, Stephanie and Mandra. A sweet candy box full of treats is headed your way soon!

These last two from our favorites list was sent to us from Jean at allthingsjeep.com. Jean gathered up the family dog and frog to entertain us. Jean just won herself a special box full of candy treats too for thinking outside the box!

Now for the dog lol

Once again, a special thank you to everyone who submitted their videos! If you didn’t win something in this contest, keep a look out for more fun sweet contests from all of us here at BlairCandy.com

We all know that many Candy Companies  put a lot of time and energy into the packaging, taste and looks of candy, but is candy really all the same in the end?  Well… not the Candy I had a chance to see being sold this past week!

I was lucky enough while out in Las Vegas on business to get a tour of one of my favorite and very successful online shoe selling websites,  Zappos. 

For years I have been following this company and admiring their style, great customer service and strong culture. From the very beginning of my correspondence about a visit, Missy Raley, Zappos help desk  coordinator made the shoe fit even more!.

Some of you might not think that Zappos sells candy like we do, so why would I be so interested.  Truthfully, it’s always been their company culture that has always caught my attention and it sure helps that they actually sell candy too! Do a quick search on their website for candy and you’ll see pages of candy items. Heck they even sell  candy watches like we do sometimes. lol

Probably the most important and rewarding  candy items they sell are located in vending machines in their free lunch cafeteria. They have vending machines full of all kinds of sweet treats for their employees and visitors, but they charge for these and donate the profits to a charity in Nevada. Now how sweet is that!

Probably the only thing I couldn’t find in this ever expanding product company was shoe strings. Yes, they sell zillions of shoes, sneakers and boots that have them already preloaded, and even a few pocket books that tie shut, but I thought for sure I’d see some different colors of short and long shoe strings that people love to enjoy, just like our variety of shoe string candy laces.

This company and its sweet culture for success is run by Mr Tony Hsieh. Tony jumped into this company with both feet, and even sits in his own cubicle not a four walled office among hundreds of other Zappos employees, like Missy who coordinates at the help desk  and Heaven our devoted tour guide and even the big guy who heads up their fraud swat team.

The visit, just like the employees we met, was amazing!  All I can say is, I’m glad they aren’t selling our kind of  candy online. I might be shaking in my boots ~ lol

It’s hard to believe that a name like  Eddie Haskell would still be referenced to almost daily in everyone’s lives!

The other day I was searching the Internet for some Nostalgic Candy pictures to hang on my newly painted office walls and came across some pictures of Eddie Haskell. I giggled when I saw them, and actually stopped looking for candy pictures and began reading though stories of him and the Cleaver family.

What a guy huh?  He’s still famous and a household name after all these years,  just like some of the candy we sell. Even my sons know what I mean when I say something in reference to an Eddie Haskell.  I sat there thinking just how this name signaled some memories in almost everyone in one way or another, almost like a Candy Bar or a Rootbeer Barrel! I’m sure many of you have had your own reference to good old Eddie  lol.

 The great Eddie Haskell name really needs no explanation to most, and not even to the younger generation because I’m sure their parents have called them or one of their friends  Eddie Haskell and then explained just who Eddie was lol.

I really began to think this through while sitting at my desk. Hmmm do we have any Eddie’s in our building?  Does our company  Blair Candy and BlairCandy.com as a whole operate with the Eddie trickery?  I really couldn’t think of anyone while working for our company that plays the Eddie rule. Our company is  what it is. We are more like the Cleavers here lol. We don’t pretend to have free shipping  and hide it in the price of the product to brown nose the customer. We really have a real candy warehouse and candy outlet store full of thousands of candy products and we really don’t schmooze our customers into pretending to have good customer service or quality products.

Nope, no Haskell’s here, just a family owned and operated real wholesale candy distributor for over 70 years!  Heck we’ve been in the candy business longer than all the Eddie Haskell’s have been  in character!  The only comparison I could  find in our company to an Eddie Haskell, was his middle name was Clark, just like the Clark Bars we sell lol!

You might have to work here to understand why I compared our candy company to a circus, but let’s just say, it gets very busy with lots going on in all corners of our operation and we often say  “ It’s a Circus in here lol.
 Much like all the acts that go on during a busy Circus, our company operates about the same way. We have our own ticket takers, clowns, acrobats, animal trainers, jugglers, concession workers and even a few strongmen.

Our ticket takers are the sweet people that answer our phones and take your order and help you find what you need. Our clowns, well… let’s just say they keep all of us laughing through out the day with their various tricks they do. Our acrobats pretty much walk a tight rope and try to find space in our warehouses to store all our candy we get in from the manufactures. The jugglers aren’t throwing balls up in the air, but they are running from desk to desk trying to catch the overflow when someone’s busy. The strongmen are just that, they unload truck after truck by hand of full cases of bubble gum, snack foods, candy bars. Next is our animal trainers, we have some employees that donate a lot of their time to Animal Rescue groups. Last but not the least our candy concession workers. Yes, we have the cotton candy, peanuts, cracker jacks, popcorn and even snow cone stuff to sell that you also find and enjoy at the circus.
 Our teams of concession workers pick and pack up these treats for everyone to enjoy!

As I was writing this blog today, something else came to mind. Our Circus that comes to town is sponsored and hosted by our Jaffa Shrine Organization. A lot of the proceeds they make from their Circus get donated to various children’s organizations to help them out. At Blair Candy, we also use some of the profits we make from our very own Circus Seasons and donate to many organizations and children’s events.

We are a big sponsor of area youth sports teams and non profit organizations. From Baseball leagues, Basketball teams to Relay for Life and our local soup kitchen.
 All of our sweet treats we sell also help many in need, just like our local Circus Sponsor.

If you want to enjoy a little old fashion nostalgic fun, visit the circus, grab some cotton candy, watch the Elephants dance and the clowns be silly or you can visit our online candy store, or our outlet candy  store here in town and enjoy some Nostalgic candy. If you’re lucky maybe even one of our “strongmen” will show off for you!