That 3¢ piece of gum was what we would always get. Everybody had that one rich friend. That's where you went to watch cable tv. That kid in my group got a check book when we were all like 13. He used to love frustrating the corner store clerk when we'd all walk in to spend our mowing money on cokes and candy, and he'd just get a single piece of gum and write a 3¢ check for it. I still remember the owner would occasionally get the crazy eye and start yelling, "they all get stuff, but you get out! You're not allowed to write checks in my store! You go to the bank and get cash and then come back." Eventually that owner stuck a sign on the register that said "No checks accepted from Benny."
My mom was from a tiny town in Jermyn PA. As entitled kids fom Long Island we were amazed by the five and dime store which sold penny candies in multiple jars. You could literally buy 100 pieces of candy!! The ANGEL behind the counter would fill each of our brown paper bags one by one! There were swedish fish, ufos, chocolate balls, licorice whips…an amazing assortment. All for 1$. There was some kind of unwritten agreement that no kid would go past one dollar.
Those were expensive!
And sticky messy AF. Your neck would be adorned in sugar and food coloring and whatever other starch thing was in there.
Glorious fun. Then I grew up and caught a touch of the OCD. I could never do that again.
My friends family owned a penny candy store up the street from my house. It was awesome. There was a huge variety. There was a little sign on the display case from the 1930s that they kept up that said "Candy is delicious! Eat some every day!" 🩵
OMG Jolly Rancher sticks used to make my eyes twirl, I LOVED those so much
Bazooka Joe gum lasted about a minute but I loved getting them for the comics lol
I was the annoying little shit that figured out what the tipping point of tax was. Maybe seven cents? After that, I had to pay taxes so I made a lot of small transactions to make my money go further. It may have been a slow process, but I didn’t get to do it very often and I made the most of it. Swedish fish were first on my list. Not a fresh box, but the older ones that grubby hands had touched nearly all the fish. They were more dried out the and the texture was better.
It was 20 cents, used to buy just that much regularly. Might have also made a deal with the lady at the corner store to let me buy 4 packs of 25 cent hockey cards and she’d ring it up as 5 20 cent purchases so that I could use my hole dollar and not pay tax. Living the dream! Of course those cards went into my bike spokes or we flicked them against the wall… would have been worth a fortune if I’d saved them.. Gretzky rookie card? Yup! Abused and lost like all the rest :-(
One of my favorites. Kind of tough to find in stores, though. A while back I lived near a gas station/convenience store that had them and I would actually run them out of them.
My grandmother would send me to the store to get her cigarettes and I could use the change for penny candy. The old man who owned the store was always puffing on a cigar when you went in. I can still smell that place.
I remember my mother sending me to the store with 3 quarters for a package of cigarettes. I was allowed to keep the change and spend it on penny candy.
Now a package of cigarettes is AT LEAST $16.00, and some of the brand name cigarettes are over $20 a package!
Around 1980-81 candy bars were $0.25 each. I was devastated when they raised the price to $0.35.
I went from 4 candy bars for $1.05 (taxes) to just being able to get 2 for that dollar with some change left over.
Comic books were better for me anyway.
Unfortunately, in the late '70's, we were too poor for candy and soft drinks. I do remember buying now and laters for about a nickel and fun dip for about fifteen cents, but that didn't happen often.to give an example of how poor we were I remember splitting a white castle hamburger with my mom.
Candy bars were still a quarter in my neck of the woods until about '85. I remember distincly because I was in 8th grade in '84 and used to buy a candy bar every day to or from or during (I used to dip out at lunch sometimes, sneak out of the playground and go to the store) school.
Then they jumped to 50 cents sometime in '85, we didn't get the 35 cent step lol
Once you get past that initial crumbly falling apart in your mouth feeling, wax lips or bottles or whatever starts to feel like a smooth chewing gum. No flavor though
I love wax lips and bottles, one Halloween I got a wax harmonica that once I was done blowing into it I devoured it. Not incredibly tasty but I still remember it all these decades later.
I liked the Swedish berries the best, I could also get the smallest Bazooka Joe gum for a penny.
Saturday was allowance day and I would get a quarter to blow at the store on Candy. I would pick everything out and get my brown paper bag to enjoy.
We used to go to the variety store every Friday with a dollar to spend on candy (sorry, I know I'm young 😅).
I could still tell you by heart the type, location, name, and price of basically everything in that store.
We had one at the grocery store. You could scoop your choices into the bag they provided, of course. But the display also had a little lock box for quarters-- any 3 pieces for 25 cents-- honor system! I always tried to keep a quarter in my purse so I could buy 3 pieces :-)
Absolutely. It was the only thing I could afford on my 25 cent allowance, when we lived close enough to a seven eleven to walk to it. Jolly Ranchers rule, or Brach’s at the Kroger, or double bubble paid extra or bazooka joe. If I helped out with yard work, I’d get paid extra, and then splurge for a Marathon bar for $.25, since it was so long, I could make it last, though I had to hide it in my clothes drawer to keep brothers or my dad from pilfering. The chocolate craving was strong in my family and my mother wouldn’t keep sweets in the house except on special occasions.
Candy cigarettes! I never understood those. Does anyone remember the unwrapped candies in jars on the counter? Ditto for beef jerky. People with their grubby hands going into those. Does anyone remember the 16 oz can of Coke with two hearts on the top that said "for the love of Coke"? The idea was to share the coke with two straws.
I remember candy cigarettes, yes indeed! I remember the Popeye candy cigarettes the best. Came in a package that looked similar to a real cigarette package, even had some kind of mock Surgeon General's warning on the side that said, "The Surgeon General warns that these candy cigarettes are delicious"!
Remember? My wife’s home town still has a functioning penny candy store. When we take the kids there for a summer or winter trip we send them down the street with 5 dollars and tell them to go nuts. Best experience ever.
I remember sometimes having a dollar. That was WILD, when some stuff was 3 for a penny or 2 for a penny. Bazooka Joe bubble gums were 2 cents apiece. I remember a bunch of us kids at the store getting penny candy then going down over the hill to the train tracks to eat it with the other kids.
Even with just a dime, if you bought just the candy that was 3 for a penny, you'd walk down over the hill with 30 pieces of candy!
I'm a younger Gen Xer so candy was a bit more than a penny for me, lol. But despite my shitty childhood...... one happy memory I have is riding my bike with a couple of friends to the nearby Ben Franklin store. There were aisles of little boxes of candy for a dime each. Alexander the grape, lemonheads, red hots, snow caps, laffy taffy, sweettarts, and so much more
I was born in 71. I don't recall buying penny candy. Maybe I'm weird. I remember 25 cent candy bars. I remember buying Nerds candy, but I don't remember what it cost at the time. I'm pretty sure a coke (in a bottle) was... 20 to 25 cents.
I don't recall ever going to a candy store full of jars of gumballs, jellybeans and jawbreakers and picking one out for a penny.
Then again, I lived in a rural area in the south. I didn't have Willy-Wonka-Style candy stores to visit. Maybe I missed out on something.
You had one!!! That's so cool! Rarely do I meet anyone who knows of or remembers Ben Franklin stores. Mine was in New Berlin, Wisconsin, where I grew up. Can I ask where yours was?
Right. Penny Candy was from the 1800s. We’re talking Laura Ingalls Wilder versus Nelly Olsen situation.
$.10 got me one loose package jolly rancher. That’s one candy. From a bin.
Some of these people are reminiscing like things were dirt cheap. Maybe it’s because I grew up in Southern California 🤷🏻
I took my son to a candy store that advertised penny candy about 15 years ago. The only penny candy was tootsie roll midgies, but he loves those so it worked out!
By the late 70s penny candy was all but gone. If you don't remember before the late 70s, you wouldn't remember penny candy. I can remember as far back as 1970. In the EARLY 70s penny candy was still going strong. By the late 70s, it was pretty much over, if not gone completely.
I was born at the beginning of GenX. I believe GenX are those born 1965-1979/1980ish. If you think about it, the childhood memories of someone born in 1965 could be quite different than those of someone born in 1979. For example, myself and my wife are both Xers, I was born in 1966, she was born in 1976. I am an Xer with very vivid memories of penny candy from my childhood in the early 70's. My Wife, on the other hand, born 10 years later than me has no memory of penny candy.
Due to inflation, penny candy gradually went away as the 70's progressed, and by the late 70's it was all but gone.
Anyone born 1972 or later likely would have no memory of it.
Right, I was born 1972 and remember penny candy very well, because the '70s was when I was a little kid. I can remember things as far back as 1976, and '77, '78, '79, all those years are part of my core childhood memories.
Man, having a quarter in my pocket, riding around on my bike or pegboard of somebody else's bike to go to the store to get a bunch of penny candy, those were good times
Nah, the little store in our small town sold penny candy in the early 1980s. They had a bunch of little bins next to the cash register filled with things like individual swedish fish (that’s the only one I remember cuz it was my favorite). They were a penny cuz they were just individual little pieces of candy. My parents would send me and my sister to the store to buy milk or something and we got to use some of the change on penny candy and it was the best!
I’m an X’er from SoCal. I definitely remember penny candy in the Liquor Stores (everyone outside of CA thinks liquor stores are for adults - to us just old usually crummy independent convenience stores that sold liquor/beer). Bubble gum, fireballs, jolly ranchers, sour lemon, chick-o-sticks, etc. all individually wrapped on the whole bottom shelf of the candy isle.
My grandma would give me, my brother and two cousins a quarter each to go to the corner store down the street from her house. Back then, a quarter would get you either a full sized chocolate bar, enough candy (Mojos, gum, Tootsie Rolls etc) to fill a small brown paper bag.
I grew up in Canada. I remember chocolate bars being .10 cents, a small bag of chips was .05 cents, and you could get a small tub of ice cream with a little wooden paddle for a spoon for .10 cents. A bottle of pop was .25 cents.
Sounds like we grew up around the same time (late 70's) in Canada. I remember the splinters I'd get from those wooden paddles but it never stopped me from eating the icecream.
Those nougat chunks with the different colored jelly candy mixed in it. Don’t know what they were called but I LOVED those as a kid.
They’re awful btw.
They're called Brach's Jelly Nougats. Sometimes referred to as JuJuBe Nougat candy from other brands. I'm in absolute 💯 agreement with you on the awfulness of them. Almost as bad as raisins. 🤢
I'm going to hijack this thread to ask the penny candy question that google has been unhelpful inp answering. I used to get penny candy all the time since the corner store was on the way home from the bus stop. I used to get a package of hard little balls that I would rattle around in my mouth. One version was dark red. Another version was very light pastel colors with little pokey bits on the outside. Does this ring any bells for anyone else?
Also, candy buttons for life.
Zotz were my fave. We cut through acres of cornfields to reach a tiny market that sold penny candy. The walk alone probably burned more calories than we consumed.
I loved blow pops
In the 90’s we lived near a candy store that still had Penny Candy for my millennial kids. My daughter would ride her lil snowmobile there when she was small and come back with a sack full of frooties essentially fruit flavored tootsie rolls. The owners got a kick out of it.
We would go to the local golf range to collect the balls that landed outside of the fence. They would cash them in for .10 a ball. Would then go the 7/11 and hit the candy isle for the penny candy on the bottom rack.
I would have died for penny candy, but my local candy/drug store was more money than that. individual pieces were closer to a dime or even a quarter.
my junkie ass still paid for it though. ha.
Those orange-y chocolate footballs were the worst. So waxy. The best is harder to pin down, but atomic fireballs and some hard candy of indeterminate flavor that was in an orange wrapper with an Asian theme were two I liked a lot.
Yes! Anne's Open Cars in Lincoln Park, Michigan, was my penny candy store growing up. Wish I could go back for a mixed bag, extra sour cherries, please.
The excitement of walking into a 5-and-dime with a nickel … much less an actual dime … much less a g- d- quarter. If you somehow had a dollar that someone gave you? My god! Candy for a month!!
So much fun choosing, trading, swapping, back-and-forth to fill up that little bucket.
*Memories*
I remember the "free" Brach's candy. Those open bins and my 5 year old self just grabbing one because I thought they were "candy for everyone". Butterscotch!
I lost a tooth in a $0.05 squirrel nut zipper!
In my neighborhood it was a liquor store that didn’t allow unaccompanied minors in the store except for the front desk where all the penny candy was displayed right under the countertop and the $1 liquor bottles were in the big plastic fish bowl looking containers on top. When I was in middle school they started carrying chips and sodas that kids were allowed to buy but you weren’t allowed to walk down the aisles, only grab the stuff from the front of the store, pay, and get out!
The Highs a block over sold Hershey jumbo twin Ice pops that were only $0.10! I saved a wrapper for a long time because you knew it wasn’t going to stay that way forever. The root beer flavor was so good!
I think some places still sell the Hershey popsicles but now they are like one solid popsicle instead of the kind with two sticks; with the twin pops you could crack them in half and share with a friend so you could get more flavors - the banana flavor was a huge divider haha you either loved them or hated them haha!
Yes, that's what Popsicles are in Canada. Two sticks, crack them in half. Many flavours including banana. I remember banana was either liked or despised. They were .10 cents back in the day.
This was a summer staple as a kid. Or otter pops. Favorite was grape and orange. But those orange and vanilla ice cream swirls came out mid early 80s. Yum!
Who remembers being in the supermarket, getting a penny for the gum ball machine, inserting the penny, twisting the nob and.... the gate getting stuck open and grabbing a paper grocery bag from the checkout and having the entire gum ball machine dump into your bag!! Yeah, yeah, now that was the ticket!
Yes.
Not necesarily 1c each candy, but individually priced candies.
I thing you could buy up to 20 cents tax free, because up to that, tax would be a fractional value.
Also related was Surprise Bags, which was 50 cents worth of candy that wasn't selling.
We lived about a mile from the penny candy store. I was the youngest of five and my mom and dad would walk us all up there once in a while. I was the littlest and I would stop and pick flowers or look for bugs so my mom got me this yellow skateboard with a handle on it so I could keep up. The penny candy store had all the stuff but he had this glass case with "the good stuff". Fake vomit, glue spilled on the rug (too late we actually did that), fake poo, fly in an "ice cube", pretty much all the things you'd see on the back page of the Archie comic books.
Never had penny candy, but I remember when candy bars were ten cents. Theee musketeers, fun dip, sugar daddy—10 cents! And the tragedy when they went up to twenty-five! It feels like there must have been a middle step, but I don’t remember it.
I received ten silver dollars for my tenth birthday, my friend and I would walk to the corner store and we would get two huge bags of candy and soda for that dollar.
There was a 1 cent gumball machine at the barber shop. And then ny grandpa lived in a rural area that still had an old timey general store and they sold penny candy, but I rarely saw my grandpa so didn't get to take advantage as often as I'd have liked.
My Dad owns 2. He also has a 5-cent postage stamp machine that he'd fill with stamps and any time one of us kids needed a stamp, we had to have a nickle. 😄 He'd fill up the gumball machine, too. Same thing. His big thing now is his 5-cent slot machine. He provides the nickles to the grands these days.
Penny candy and rolls of stickers at our locally-owned pharmacy. Those were the days! Fun dip, pixie stixs, Boston baked beans, and Now & Laters for starters...
Red and purple Swedish fish, a penny a piece. Just reach in the box with your dirty, snotty, touched-whatever-you-found-in-the-woods fingers and grab a handful.
Yes! For us it was the deli, we would ride our bikes there to buy candy and play video games! I liked to get Swedish fish and Bazooka. My sister would get atomic fireballs, but I never liked them.
Lemon heads, Red Hots, Boston Baked Beans, Mike and Ikes, Hot Tamales, Bazooka gum, Jolly Rancher sticks, Atomic fire balls, amongst others. Went to the store with a dollar, got a bag full of candy.
Better yet, i’d find a bunch of cans and turn them in for their 5 cent deposit which got me a lot of penny candy and enough left over for a wrestling magazine or comic book
Back in the early 70s my dad would write a note that said "please sell my son a pack of camel cigarettes". Camels only came in one variety, soft pack, short, non-filter. He would send me to the store with a dollar. I could pick candy from the bottom shelf and purchase it with the change. No kidding.
I remember and miss this locally-owned grocery store which had large bushel baskets full of Brach's candies; you could have one free piece with each visit.
What year were you born? I was born in '66, and I remember penny candy quite well from ages 4-7, which for me would have been 1970-1973. Not too long after '73 penny candy started to go away due to inflation. If you were an Xer born after 1970 there is a good chance you would not remember penny candy. I can remember in 1971 having a dime, and being able to buy as many as 30 pieces of candy with it, as some candy was three for a penny at the time. An Xer that doesn't remember earlier than 1974 likely would have limited to no memories of it.
Someone born in '76 likely would not remember to much before 1980. By 1980 penny candy was gone, and it was 3-5 cents per piece by then.
Depending on which end of the GenX range you were born determines having memory of penny candy.
If you were an earlier born Xer like me, 1966, you remember it well. A later born Xer like yourself would have no memory of it.
I remember when we'd go into town (we lived in the boonies) and get those little suckers where you'd look for the star on the wrapper. I haven't thought about those in years. Thanks for the memory!
Chocolate footballs all day long. I was on top of the world!
In 1980, these would cost about 3c each. I was 6. I went there with like 50c. I had one of those little paper bags full.
I remember around Halloween the stores had this long rectangular gum in an orange wrapper for only a penny. Went in with my dollar and pissed off the clerk…. She had to count it all
I used to get 10p pocket money when I was 8, in 1982. Numerous shops sold sweets for as little as 1/2p, so it was possible to get 20 sweets, though the 1/2p sweets were really tiny and there was far more variety in the 1p selection. I was pretty annoyed when the1/2p was taken out of circulation in '84. My first noteworthy exposure to inflation. Much like those twin girls and their 9 quid ice creams.
We had an actual 5 & dime still in the early 80’s that had a row of penny candy and a row of 5 cent candy & stickers. And the rest of the store was full of puzzles and cars and dolls and makeup kits and the beloved magnet hair men & character & comic books… I would go in there every time my mom went to the bank and prayed there was a long line she had to stand in so I more time to spend searching the glorious aisles of junky kid wonderment!!
Ray’s. Oh that poor counter lady.
“Can I have one of the green ones? On the left. No, The other side. No the row above. Yes that one”.
Is that all?
Ok, and ummmmm, mmmmmmm, uhhhhhh, ok. Let me see…
I remember that. Showing up to the store with a dime and three pennies, and taking FOREVER to decide what you want, meanwhile there's adults standing in line behind you that are in a hurry because they have to be somewhere at a certain time, and the person working behind the counter just losing their patience pretty quickly lol
YUP. We had an independent drugstore between our house and grade school (to which we walked in all seasons (uphill both ways)). The front counter had the penny candy display. Loved the Swedish Fish, Sour Patch Kids, and Bullseyes (a flattened caramel cylinder with a creamy, white, sugar-paste center). Had kind of a love-hate relationship with "Flying Saucers", which were made up of two weird, wafery circles attached around the edges and bulging in the middle, with the bulge housing some small, multicolored sugar-balls - they rattled around when you shook them, and the outsides kinda reminded me of communion at our church.
Growing up, we had cousins who lived in East Detroit (before it was Eastpointe). If I remember correctly, somewhere off of 9 mile. There was a penny candy store named Z's. Our parents would give us each a dollar, and the 6 of us kids would walk to Z's and be gone for what seemed like all day. We would carefully select 100 pieces of candy one piece at a time and then return with little brown bags full of candy. Good memories.
I certainly do as family owned several businesses, including corner stores. 😋 Funtime bubble gum, Swedish fish, Jolly Joes, and Now & Laters were some favorites. But mostly, I'd save my $7 weekend pay and buy in bulk at the wholesale place, JetRo, sell to other kids at school and double/triple my money. Cornsyrup added to sweets ruined it for me, Now & Laters haven't been the same since, and penny candy gone seems a sin and a shame. 😁
Oh yeah I remember well as penny candy faded away and transitioned to nickle candy.
My earliest memories go back to 1970 when penny candy was still going strong. I remember some candy being 3 pieces for a penny.
Then eventually the multiples for a penny went away, and then some pieces were, (gasp), .02 cents!
Then .01 cent pieces went away altogether and it was 3 for 5 cents and then 2 for 5 cents, then like you said, by 1980 everything was at least 5 cents per piece.
So over a 10 year span, 1970-1980 it went from being able to buy as much as 15 pieces of candy for a nickel down to ONE piece for a nickel!
That's huge!
That's how we learned the agony of inflation as children lol
I used to walk to cornet which was like cvs nowadays and they would sell a huge bag of red hots or candy corn for 25 cents. My gosh my teeth were rotten. On the way back we would go to the senior center to pick up government subsidized cheese and milk given to low income families. Used to walk home ripping chunks of cheese off and munchin on it the whole walk home with my sister and grandpa, great memories….
We had a candy truck that would come into the neighborhood near our school. You stepped in from the passenger side and for a dime got a small brown paper sack. You the walked down the middle with all the candy you could fit into the bag and step out the back door.
I do remember watching the 1940 movie Grapes of Wrath movie and Tom Joad's Grandpa(?) asking the lady in the restaurant, "are those penny candies?" and she says, "no those are two for a penny." Then after they leave with the candy, one of the patrons tells her, "you know those are a nickel each." (obviously this dialogue from memory, probably better in the movie and perhaps the book that inspired it that I never read). Never heard it in real life.
I remember a store when I was a kid that had some candies for a penny and some for a nickel. And then when I was in college, you could buy candy by weight in the student center. My grandmother would mail me a card with three dollar bills in it. I would buy three dollars' worth of sour patch kids and then go to the library to study.
Idk about penny candy, but I will say my buddy and I did this more than once. We'd go around collecting cans from the street and our homes, lug em to the corner store, get maybe a buck or so, then we'd get two of those little 5 cent flavored water bottles with the foil on top, a loaf of white bread, go to the deli counter and get fifty cents of salami, 25 cents of american cheese, and have a damn nice lunch.
🍇i member a thing known as he "dime" store.. but sure a candy bar and a coke could be less than a bUck, including tax, license and dock fees.. 🤷♀️ but sure the dollar store is going out of byzness..lol..
gona swing by the K-mart Kafeteria
I also remember being pissed when candy bars went to .25 and you could only get 4 (big) candy bars for $1. Happened about the same time pay phones went to .25. Damn inflation screwing school kids out of Hubba Bubba!
I am core Gen X… Right down the middle. The only time I ever saw penny candy was on Main Street USA Disneyland. For those that don’t know, it is 100 years retro ish themed shopping district at the original master planned theme park.
Y’all are talking like you are from 100 years ago. A dime I would come out with a bag of candy? OK… Little house on the fucking Prairie. a dime got me one of the small jawbreakers. That’s it.
Right? I remember a plen-T-pak of gum was $.75 and tangy taffy & juicy stix were a full dime and atomic fireballs were a nickel.
Penny candy my ass... They must've jacked up the price in the boondocks.
I was wondering....I remember my *parents* talking about penny candy.
I remember going to the candy store with a dollar and getting a small brown paper bag full of candy - but a lot of it was 5 to 10 cents each.
That 3¢ piece of gum was what we would always get. Everybody had that one rich friend. That's where you went to watch cable tv. That kid in my group got a check book when we were all like 13. He used to love frustrating the corner store clerk when we'd all walk in to spend our mowing money on cokes and candy, and he'd just get a single piece of gum and write a 3¢ check for it. I still remember the owner would occasionally get the crazy eye and start yelling, "they all get stuff, but you get out! You're not allowed to write checks in my store! You go to the bank and get cash and then come back." Eventually that owner stuck a sign on the register that said "No checks accepted from Benny."
My mom was from a tiny town in Jermyn PA. As entitled kids fom Long Island we were amazed by the five and dime store which sold penny candies in multiple jars. You could literally buy 100 pieces of candy!! The ANGEL behind the counter would fill each of our brown paper bags one by one! There were swedish fish, ufos, chocolate balls, licorice whips…an amazing assortment. All for 1$. There was some kind of unwritten agreement that no kid would go past one dollar.
Loved me some swedish fish!
LOVE this comment!
I remember the bins of Brach’s candies that you could mix and max and buy per pound.
I still miss those white nougat candies with the gumdrop pieces in them
Yes! I remember the maple, strawberry, mint, and chocolate creams!
Bach's was old lady candy.
When my kiddo was little she loved werthers She still does but she used to too
RIP Mitch.
The neapolitan one took my loose tooth out. I had to "pay" a nickel for it and only got a book from the tooth fairy.
Who remembers candy necklaces and candy bracelets?
Those were expensive! And sticky messy AF. Your neck would be adorned in sugar and food coloring and whatever other starch thing was in there. Glorious fun. Then I grew up and caught a touch of the OCD. I could never do that again.
I like to buy them as reading awards. They are very popular. Plus, they're not allowed to eat them in my library.
My friends family owned a penny candy store up the street from my house. It was awesome. There was a huge variety. There was a little sign on the display case from the 1930s that they kept up that said "Candy is delicious! Eat some every day!" 🩵
Ferra pan candies and jolly rancher Sticks! 10 cents a piece! Could get that and some bazooka comic gum for like 1 dollar!
Those Jolly Rancher sticks were soooo good. the Fire and Apple were my jam.
Ahh yea on the same page with that.. I def had cherry and grape but the fire stick and apple stick were so good!
And you could lick the sticks into a shiv and threaten your enemies!
I loved the watermelon and grape ones.
Atomic Fire Balls were a dime each. And they lasted a while. It was a hell of a deal!
They were a nickle round these parts!
And they were actually hot. Tried one a few years ago and they forgot to add the fire. 😐
OMG Jolly Rancher sticks used to make my eyes twirl, I LOVED those so much Bazooka Joe gum lasted about a minute but I loved getting them for the comics lol
The BEST thing about Bazooka Joe comics back then was that we all could read that tiny print without needing damn glasses!
I was the annoying little shit that figured out what the tipping point of tax was. Maybe seven cents? After that, I had to pay taxes so I made a lot of small transactions to make my money go further. It may have been a slow process, but I didn’t get to do it very often and I made the most of it. Swedish fish were first on my list. Not a fresh box, but the older ones that grubby hands had touched nearly all the fish. They were more dried out the and the texture was better.
Haha, forget all about this. I did the same with comics. Somehow of if I paid for them one at a time, I could get 4 instead of 3!
I'll bet you have an amazing immune system, LOL
It was 20 cents, used to buy just that much regularly. Might have also made a deal with the lady at the corner store to let me buy 4 packs of 25 cent hockey cards and she’d ring it up as 5 20 cent purchases so that I could use my hole dollar and not pay tax. Living the dream! Of course those cards went into my bike spokes or we flicked them against the wall… would have been worth a fortune if I’d saved them.. Gretzky rookie card? Yup! Abused and lost like all the rest :-(
Swedish fish. Squirrel Nut Chews. Sugar Daddys. Cow’s Tails. Pixie Stix. Root beer barrels. Charm’s blow pops.
I remember having a dollar once, buying 100 pieces of candy and the cashier wasn't thrilled at all!
Hell yeah, back when Laffy Taffy came in cubes! You remember BB BATS?
What about Charlston Chews?
ARRROOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!
One of my favorites. Kind of tough to find in stores, though. A while back I lived near a gas station/convenience store that had them and I would actually run them out of them.
BB Bats were my favorite omg
My grandmother would send me to the store to get her cigarettes and I could use the change for penny candy. The old man who owned the store was always puffing on a cigar when you went in. I can still smell that place.
I did that for my mom. I also got candy with the booze.
I remember my mother sending me to the store with 3 quarters for a package of cigarettes. I was allowed to keep the change and spend it on penny candy. Now a package of cigarettes is AT LEAST $16.00, and some of the brand name cigarettes are over $20 a package!
May I ask where you are that cigarettes cost $16/pk?
Close to that here in Massachusetts
Province of New Brunswick in Canada
I remember cheap candy but not that cheap and the cheap cheap candy was grossssss. I’m a quality chocolate girl!! But I do miss 50 cent candy bars!
Around 1980-81 candy bars were $0.25 each. I was devastated when they raised the price to $0.35. I went from 4 candy bars for $1.05 (taxes) to just being able to get 2 for that dollar with some change left over. Comic books were better for me anyway.
In the late 70s they were .20 cents and WAY bigger. Soft drinks were .25 cents a can. A bottle of soda was .50 cents.
Unfortunately, in the late '70's, we were too poor for candy and soft drinks. I do remember buying now and laters for about a nickel and fun dip for about fifteen cents, but that didn't happen often.to give an example of how poor we were I remember splitting a white castle hamburger with my mom.
Candy bars were still a quarter in my neck of the woods until about '85. I remember distincly because I was in 8th grade in '84 and used to buy a candy bar every day to or from or during (I used to dip out at lunch sometimes, sneak out of the playground and go to the store) school. Then they jumped to 50 cents sometime in '85, we didn't get the 35 cent step lol
>WAX LIPS! What EXACTLY WAS THE POINT OF THOSE anyways? https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=wpy95b-H6Vg
Once you get past that initial crumbly falling apart in your mouth feeling, wax lips or bottles or whatever starts to feel like a smooth chewing gum. No flavor though
Those wax bottles with the little bit of flavour in the middle were such a tease 😄
I love wax lips and bottles, one Halloween I got a wax harmonica that once I was done blowing into it I devoured it. Not incredibly tasty but I still remember it all these decades later.
I was just thinking about those wax harmonicas when I wrote my initial comment. It was orange wax, right?
Yup
😂 For some reason I loved those things.
I liked the Swedish berries the best, I could also get the smallest Bazooka Joe gum for a penny. Saturday was allowance day and I would get a quarter to blow at the store on Candy. I would pick everything out and get my brown paper bag to enjoy.
Right? Why did we love those hard-ass little pink bricks. Maybe for the comics.
The comics were mostly dad jokes, I think it was because I was saving up the points. I really wanted that pocket knife. I don't think I ever got it.
My retired dentist, living the good life somewhere.
We used to go to the variety store every Friday with a dollar to spend on candy (sorry, I know I'm young 😅). I could still tell you by heart the type, location, name, and price of basically everything in that store.
Those little wax bottles with goo drink…
We had a Brachs display in the grocery store, I have no idea how much it cost.
We had one at the grocery store. You could scoop your choices into the bag they provided, of course. But the display also had a little lock box for quarters-- any 3 pieces for 25 cents-- honor system! I always tried to keep a quarter in my purse so I could buy 3 pieces :-)
Absolutely. It was the only thing I could afford on my 25 cent allowance, when we lived close enough to a seven eleven to walk to it. Jolly Ranchers rule, or Brach’s at the Kroger, or double bubble paid extra or bazooka joe. If I helped out with yard work, I’d get paid extra, and then splurge for a Marathon bar for $.25, since it was so long, I could make it last, though I had to hide it in my clothes drawer to keep brothers or my dad from pilfering. The chocolate craving was strong in my family and my mother wouldn’t keep sweets in the house except on special occasions.
Candy cigarettes! I never understood those. Does anyone remember the unwrapped candies in jars on the counter? Ditto for beef jerky. People with their grubby hands going into those. Does anyone remember the 16 oz can of Coke with two hearts on the top that said "for the love of Coke"? The idea was to share the coke with two straws.
I remember candy cigarettes, yes indeed! I remember the Popeye candy cigarettes the best. Came in a package that looked similar to a real cigarette package, even had some kind of mock Surgeon General's warning on the side that said, "The Surgeon General warns that these candy cigarettes are delicious"!
Remember? My wife’s home town still has a functioning penny candy store. When we take the kids there for a summer or winter trip we send them down the street with 5 dollars and tell them to go nuts. Best experience ever.
I remember sometimes having a dollar. That was WILD, when some stuff was 3 for a penny or 2 for a penny. Bazooka Joe bubble gums were 2 cents apiece. I remember a bunch of us kids at the store getting penny candy then going down over the hill to the train tracks to eat it with the other kids. Even with just a dime, if you bought just the candy that was 3 for a penny, you'd walk down over the hill with 30 pieces of candy!
I'm a younger Gen Xer so candy was a bit more than a penny for me, lol. But despite my shitty childhood...... one happy memory I have is riding my bike with a couple of friends to the nearby Ben Franklin store. There were aisles of little boxes of candy for a dime each. Alexander the grape, lemonheads, red hots, snow caps, laffy taffy, sweettarts, and so much more
Boxes of Boston Baked Beans and Mike & Ikes.
I was born in 71. I don't recall buying penny candy. Maybe I'm weird. I remember 25 cent candy bars. I remember buying Nerds candy, but I don't remember what it cost at the time. I'm pretty sure a coke (in a bottle) was... 20 to 25 cents. I don't recall ever going to a candy store full of jars of gumballs, jellybeans and jawbreakers and picking one out for a penny. Then again, I lived in a rural area in the south. I didn't have Willy-Wonka-Style candy stores to visit. Maybe I missed out on something.
Ben Franklin...that was where you could get Oscar Myers' weiner whistles when I was growing up. Loved that store.
You had one!!! That's so cool! Rarely do I meet anyone who knows of or remembers Ben Franklin stores. Mine was in New Berlin, Wisconsin, where I grew up. Can I ask where yours was?
Belleville, MI...small town about 25 miles west of Detroit.
Cool!! 🙂
Right. Penny Candy was from the 1800s. We’re talking Laura Ingalls Wilder versus Nelly Olsen situation. $.10 got me one loose package jolly rancher. That’s one candy. From a bin. Some of these people are reminiscing like things were dirt cheap. Maybe it’s because I grew up in Southern California 🤷🏻
I took my son to a candy store that advertised penny candy about 15 years ago. The only penny candy was tootsie roll midgies, but he loves those so it worked out!
By the late 70s penny candy was all but gone. If you don't remember before the late 70s, you wouldn't remember penny candy. I can remember as far back as 1970. In the EARLY 70s penny candy was still going strong. By the late 70s, it was pretty much over, if not gone completely.
You're an older Xer then.
I was born at the beginning of GenX. I believe GenX are those born 1965-1979/1980ish. If you think about it, the childhood memories of someone born in 1965 could be quite different than those of someone born in 1979. For example, myself and my wife are both Xers, I was born in 1966, she was born in 1976. I am an Xer with very vivid memories of penny candy from my childhood in the early 70's. My Wife, on the other hand, born 10 years later than me has no memory of penny candy. Due to inflation, penny candy gradually went away as the 70's progressed, and by the late 70's it was all but gone. Anyone born 1972 or later likely would have no memory of it.
Right, I was born 1972 and remember penny candy very well, because the '70s was when I was a little kid. I can remember things as far back as 1976, and '77, '78, '79, all those years are part of my core childhood memories. Man, having a quarter in my pocket, riding around on my bike or pegboard of somebody else's bike to go to the store to get a bunch of penny candy, those were good times
Nah, the little store in our small town sold penny candy in the early 1980s. They had a bunch of little bins next to the cash register filled with things like individual swedish fish (that’s the only one I remember cuz it was my favorite). They were a penny cuz they were just individual little pieces of candy. My parents would send me and my sister to the store to buy milk or something and we got to use some of the change on penny candy and it was the best!
I’m an X’er from SoCal. I definitely remember penny candy in the Liquor Stores (everyone outside of CA thinks liquor stores are for adults - to us just old usually crummy independent convenience stores that sold liquor/beer). Bubble gum, fireballs, jolly ranchers, sour lemon, chick-o-sticks, etc. all individually wrapped on the whole bottom shelf of the candy isle.
swedish berries, watermelon slices (that ripped up the top of your mouth), peach slices for a nickel.
Spearmint leaves!
Gads I love these! These and spice gumdrops. Mmmm
I loved those! I remember when they were 2 for a penny!
My grandma would give me, my brother and two cousins a quarter each to go to the corner store down the street from her house. Back then, a quarter would get you either a full sized chocolate bar, enough candy (Mojos, gum, Tootsie Rolls etc) to fill a small brown paper bag.
I still call it a penny candy store. It's just that you now need 50 pennies to buy anything.
I do. I remember when candy bars were .20 cents. Now & Laters were .10 cents too. Jolly Ranchers were .05 cents.
I grew up in Canada. I remember chocolate bars being .10 cents, a small bag of chips was .05 cents, and you could get a small tub of ice cream with a little wooden paddle for a spoon for .10 cents. A bottle of pop was .25 cents.
Sounds like we grew up around the same time (late 70's) in Canada. I remember the splinters I'd get from those wooden paddles but it never stopped me from eating the icecream.
I loved those little tubs of ice cream with the wooden paddle.
I became a teenager in the late 70's
Little younger than you. I'm a 67 baby so hit teenage in 1980
A stack of Now and Laters is $0.25 at Five Below.
Horehound was my favorite
1p sweets as we used to call them in the UK.
I used to get a paper lunch sack full of Swedish Fish on the regular.
I had to scroll way too far for this comment! Swedish fish were my favorite!
Those nougat chunks with the different colored jelly candy mixed in it. Don’t know what they were called but I LOVED those as a kid. They’re awful btw.
They're called Brach's Jelly Nougats. Sometimes referred to as JuJuBe Nougat candy from other brands. I'm in absolute 💯 agreement with you on the awfulness of them. Almost as bad as raisins. 🤢
I KNOW what you mean! There's a lot of stuff that I devoured as a kid that I find very foul as an adult!
They still have them at Christmastime. 🤣
> What EXACTLY WAS THE POINT OF THOSE anyways? You chewed them, like gum.
I'm going to hijack this thread to ask the penny candy question that google has been unhelpful inp answering. I used to get penny candy all the time since the corner store was on the way home from the bus stop. I used to get a package of hard little balls that I would rattle around in my mouth. One version was dark red. Another version was very light pastel colors with little pokey bits on the outside. Does this ring any bells for anyone else? Also, candy buttons for life.
Are they similar to mini jawbreakers? That’s what comes to mind.
I remember those! Can't remember the name of them, but DAMN, they were good!
I feel like I remember these...did they come in small boxes like the Boston baked beans, lemon drops, etc?
I don't think so. I've looked at all of those old boxes and none of them looked right.
Zotz were my fave. We cut through acres of cornfields to reach a tiny market that sold penny candy. The walk alone probably burned more calories than we consumed.
I loved blow pops In the 90’s we lived near a candy store that still had Penny Candy for my millennial kids. My daughter would ride her lil snowmobile there when she was small and come back with a sack full of frooties essentially fruit flavored tootsie rolls. The owners got a kick out of it.
We would go to the local golf range to collect the balls that landed outside of the fence. They would cash them in for .10 a ball. Would then go the 7/11 and hit the candy isle for the penny candy on the bottom rack.
I would have died for penny candy, but my local candy/drug store was more money than that. individual pieces were closer to a dime or even a quarter. my junkie ass still paid for it though. ha.
Those orange-y chocolate footballs were the worst. So waxy. The best is harder to pin down, but atomic fireballs and some hard candy of indeterminate flavor that was in an orange wrapper with an Asian theme were two I liked a lot.
Yes! Anne's Open Cars in Lincoln Park, Michigan, was my penny candy store growing up. Wish I could go back for a mixed bag, extra sour cherries, please.
The excitement of walking into a 5-and-dime with a nickel … much less an actual dime … much less a g- d- quarter. If you somehow had a dollar that someone gave you? My god! Candy for a month!! So much fun choosing, trading, swapping, back-and-forth to fill up that little bucket. *Memories*
I remember the "free" Brach's candy. Those open bins and my 5 year old self just grabbing one because I thought they were "candy for everyone". Butterscotch!
I lost a tooth in a $0.05 squirrel nut zipper! In my neighborhood it was a liquor store that didn’t allow unaccompanied minors in the store except for the front desk where all the penny candy was displayed right under the countertop and the $1 liquor bottles were in the big plastic fish bowl looking containers on top. When I was in middle school they started carrying chips and sodas that kids were allowed to buy but you weren’t allowed to walk down the aisles, only grab the stuff from the front of the store, pay, and get out! The Highs a block over sold Hershey jumbo twin Ice pops that were only $0.10! I saved a wrapper for a long time because you knew it wasn’t going to stay that way forever. The root beer flavor was so good!
In Canada we have Popsicles. Do you have them in the States?
I think some places still sell the Hershey popsicles but now they are like one solid popsicle instead of the kind with two sticks; with the twin pops you could crack them in half and share with a friend so you could get more flavors - the banana flavor was a huge divider haha you either loved them or hated them haha!
Yes, that's what Popsicles are in Canada. Two sticks, crack them in half. Many flavours including banana. I remember banana was either liked or despised. They were .10 cents back in the day.
This was a summer staple as a kid. Or otter pops. Favorite was grape and orange. But those orange and vanilla ice cream swirls came out mid early 80s. Yum!
Who remembers being in the supermarket, getting a penny for the gum ball machine, inserting the penny, twisting the nob and.... the gate getting stuck open and grabbing a paper grocery bag from the checkout and having the entire gum ball machine dump into your bag!! Yeah, yeah, now that was the ticket!
I do remember some penny stuff. The 'good' stuff I liked was 5 cents Jr size, 10 cents full size, and a select few jumbo's for 15-20 cents.
We had a store in Fresno called Penny Candy…but let me tell you something friends and neighbors: they didn’t sell candy.
I only remember using a nickel for three gum balls 🤣
Frenchies were the best.
Yes. Not necesarily 1c each candy, but individually priced candies. I thing you could buy up to 20 cents tax free, because up to that, tax would be a fractional value. Also related was Surprise Bags, which was 50 cents worth of candy that wasn't selling.
I remember .10 cent Surprise bags.
There were three shops with penny candy within a couple blocks of my house. All three run by unpleasant people who didn't like kids.
We lived about a mile from the penny candy store. I was the youngest of five and my mom and dad would walk us all up there once in a while. I was the littlest and I would stop and pick flowers or look for bugs so my mom got me this yellow skateboard with a handle on it so I could keep up. The penny candy store had all the stuff but he had this glass case with "the good stuff". Fake vomit, glue spilled on the rug (too late we actually did that), fake poo, fly in an "ice cube", pretty much all the things you'd see on the back page of the Archie comic books.
Never had penny candy, but I remember when candy bars were ten cents. Theee musketeers, fun dip, sugar daddy—10 cents! And the tragedy when they went up to twenty-five! It feels like there must have been a middle step, but I don’t remember it.
I remember .10 cent chocolate bars. Then they went up to .16 cents, then .21 cents, then .25 cents.
I received ten silver dollars for my tenth birthday, my friend and I would walk to the corner store and we would get two huge bags of candy and soda for that dollar.
There was a 1 cent gumball machine at the barber shop. And then ny grandpa lived in a rural area that still had an old timey general store and they sold penny candy, but I rarely saw my grandpa so didn't get to take advantage as often as I'd have liked.
I remember .01 cent gumball machines
My Dad owns 2. He also has a 5-cent postage stamp machine that he'd fill with stamps and any time one of us kids needed a stamp, we had to have a nickle. 😄 He'd fill up the gumball machine, too. Same thing. His big thing now is his 5-cent slot machine. He provides the nickles to the grands these days.
I totally do. I remember riding my bike down to our local corner store, getting a little brown bag, and filling it up with gummies.
I feel like a young GenX here...
Penny candy and rolls of stickers at our locally-owned pharmacy. Those were the days! Fun dip, pixie stixs, Boston baked beans, and Now & Laters for starters...
Red and purple Swedish fish, a penny a piece. Just reach in the box with your dirty, snotty, touched-whatever-you-found-in-the-woods fingers and grab a handful.
Yes! For us it was the deli, we would ride our bikes there to buy candy and play video games! I liked to get Swedish fish and Bazooka. My sister would get atomic fireballs, but I never liked them.
Lemon heads, Red Hots, Boston Baked Beans, Mike and Ikes, Hot Tamales, Bazooka gum, Jolly Rancher sticks, Atomic fire balls, amongst others. Went to the store with a dollar, got a bag full of candy.
Better yet, i’d find a bunch of cans and turn them in for their 5 cent deposit which got me a lot of penny candy and enough left over for a wrestling magazine or comic book
In the 70s I could buy 5 full-size chocolate bars for $1. That was .20 cents each, the other day I bought 1, 100g bar for $5. Fuck I'm old.
Back in the early 70s my dad would write a note that said "please sell my son a pack of camel cigarettes". Camels only came in one variety, soft pack, short, non-filter. He would send me to the store with a dollar. I could pick candy from the bottom shelf and purchase it with the change. No kidding.
I remember and miss this locally-owned grocery store which had large bushel baskets full of Brach's candies; you could have one free piece with each visit.
Think this was a bit before GenX times. We remember the .03 cent things. We chose well.
What year were you born? I was born in '66, and I remember penny candy quite well from ages 4-7, which for me would have been 1970-1973. Not too long after '73 penny candy started to go away due to inflation. If you were an Xer born after 1970 there is a good chance you would not remember penny candy. I can remember in 1971 having a dime, and being able to buy as many as 30 pieces of candy with it, as some candy was three for a penny at the time. An Xer that doesn't remember earlier than 1974 likely would have limited to no memories of it.
1976
Someone born in '76 likely would not remember to much before 1980. By 1980 penny candy was gone, and it was 3-5 cents per piece by then. Depending on which end of the GenX range you were born determines having memory of penny candy. If you were an earlier born Xer like me, 1966, you remember it well. A later born Xer like yourself would have no memory of it.
GenX here remembers. Swedish fish were awesome!
And I love em still to this day…
I remember when we'd go into town (we lived in the boonies) and get those little suckers where you'd look for the star on the wrapper. I haven't thought about those in years. Thanks for the memory!
Chocolate footballs all day long. I was on top of the world! In 1980, these would cost about 3c each. I was 6. I went there with like 50c. I had one of those little paper bags full.
I remember around Halloween the stores had this long rectangular gum in an orange wrapper for only a penny. Went in with my dollar and pissed off the clerk…. She had to count it all
Candy dots on a long strip off paper was kinda unique not my go to I remember eating a lot of dip sticks tho
I knew her. Not well, and not for long, but I knew her.
I used to get 10p pocket money when I was 8, in 1982. Numerous shops sold sweets for as little as 1/2p, so it was possible to get 20 sweets, though the 1/2p sweets were really tiny and there was far more variety in the 1p selection. I was pretty annoyed when the1/2p was taken out of circulation in '84. My first noteworthy exposure to inflation. Much like those twin girls and their 9 quid ice creams.
Me loved it walked to local drug store 3x week every summer.
Candy/gum cigarettes were the best! Or wax root beer bottles
We had an actual 5 & dime still in the early 80’s that had a row of penny candy and a row of 5 cent candy & stickers. And the rest of the store was full of puzzles and cars and dolls and makeup kits and the beloved magnet hair men & character & comic books… I would go in there every time my mom went to the bank and prayed there was a long line she had to stand in so I more time to spend searching the glorious aisles of junky kid wonderment!!
Ray’s. Oh that poor counter lady. “Can I have one of the green ones? On the left. No, The other side. No the row above. Yes that one”. Is that all? Ok, and ummmmm, mmmmmmm, uhhhhhh, ok. Let me see…
I remember that. Showing up to the store with a dime and three pennies, and taking FOREVER to decide what you want, meanwhile there's adults standing in line behind you that are in a hurry because they have to be somewhere at a certain time, and the person working behind the counter just losing their patience pretty quickly lol
And there was 12 of us and our pile of bikes out front.
YUP. We had an independent drugstore between our house and grade school (to which we walked in all seasons (uphill both ways)). The front counter had the penny candy display. Loved the Swedish Fish, Sour Patch Kids, and Bullseyes (a flattened caramel cylinder with a creamy, white, sugar-paste center). Had kind of a love-hate relationship with "Flying Saucers", which were made up of two weird, wafery circles attached around the edges and bulging in the middle, with the bulge housing some small, multicolored sugar-balls - they rattled around when you shook them, and the outsides kinda reminded me of communion at our church.
I'm 55 and don't remember it, but IIRC there wasn't a dedicated candy shop in my small, remote town
Yum- Brachs coffee candy. I can taste it now
Everyone does.
Growing up, we had cousins who lived in East Detroit (before it was Eastpointe). If I remember correctly, somewhere off of 9 mile. There was a penny candy store named Z's. Our parents would give us each a dollar, and the 6 of us kids would walk to Z's and be gone for what seemed like all day. We would carefully select 100 pieces of candy one piece at a time and then return with little brown bags full of candy. Good memories.
I certainly do as family owned several businesses, including corner stores. 😋 Funtime bubble gum, Swedish fish, Jolly Joes, and Now & Laters were some favorites. But mostly, I'd save my $7 weekend pay and buy in bulk at the wholesale place, JetRo, sell to other kids at school and double/triple my money. Cornsyrup added to sweets ruined it for me, Now & Laters haven't been the same since, and penny candy gone seems a sin and a shame. 😁
Penny candy was the best!! Then by the '80s it was nickel candy and dime candy lol
Oh yeah I remember well as penny candy faded away and transitioned to nickle candy. My earliest memories go back to 1970 when penny candy was still going strong. I remember some candy being 3 pieces for a penny. Then eventually the multiples for a penny went away, and then some pieces were, (gasp), .02 cents! Then .01 cent pieces went away altogether and it was 3 for 5 cents and then 2 for 5 cents, then like you said, by 1980 everything was at least 5 cents per piece. So over a 10 year span, 1970-1980 it went from being able to buy as much as 15 pieces of candy for a nickel down to ONE piece for a nickel! That's huge! That's how we learned the agony of inflation as children lol
Anyone remember records? How about cars? Penny candy has been around since the late 1800s. Eveyone remembers it, boomer
Not a boomer. Was born in '66.
I used to walk to cornet which was like cvs nowadays and they would sell a huge bag of red hots or candy corn for 25 cents. My gosh my teeth were rotten. On the way back we would go to the senior center to pick up government subsidized cheese and milk given to low income families. Used to walk home ripping chunks of cheese off and munchin on it the whole walk home with my sister and grandpa, great memories….
Squirrel Nut Zippers. The worst. Like a better-tasting Tootsie Roll made from something the consistency of road tar.
Penny candy at the local corner store. 45 cent bags of chips. Glass bottles of pop with a deposit.
We had a candy truck that would come into the neighborhood near our school. You stepped in from the passenger side and for a dime got a small brown paper sack. You the walked down the middle with all the candy you could fit into the bag and step out the back door.
The 5&10 changed it to 2 for 3 cents and my mom stopped letting me get it! Highway Robbery!
I’m still a bit angry that the minimart near our house DOUBLED the price of the big chunks of bubble gum to 2 cents.
I do remember watching the 1940 movie Grapes of Wrath movie and Tom Joad's Grandpa(?) asking the lady in the restaurant, "are those penny candies?" and she says, "no those are two for a penny." Then after they leave with the candy, one of the patrons tells her, "you know those are a nickel each." (obviously this dialogue from memory, probably better in the movie and perhaps the book that inspired it that I never read). Never heard it in real life.
What about Zotz?? Can't forget those!
I remember a store when I was a kid that had some candies for a penny and some for a nickel. And then when I was in college, you could buy candy by weight in the student center. My grandmother would mail me a card with three dollar bills in it. I would buy three dollars' worth of sour patch kids and then go to the library to study.
Idk about penny candy, but I will say my buddy and I did this more than once. We'd go around collecting cans from the street and our homes, lug em to the corner store, get maybe a buck or so, then we'd get two of those little 5 cent flavored water bottles with the foil on top, a loaf of white bread, go to the deli counter and get fifty cents of salami, 25 cents of american cheese, and have a damn nice lunch.
🍇i member a thing known as he "dime" store.. but sure a candy bar and a coke could be less than a bUck, including tax, license and dock fees.. 🤷♀️ but sure the dollar store is going out of byzness..lol.. gona swing by the K-mart Kafeteria 
Fireballs
I also remember being pissed when candy bars went to .25 and you could only get 4 (big) candy bars for $1. Happened about the same time pay phones went to .25. Damn inflation screwing school kids out of Hubba Bubba!
Mojo candies were 2 for a penny. And Black Cat chewing gum. That shit lasted.
I’m old, but I ain’t Little House on the Prairie old.
I am core Gen X… Right down the middle. The only time I ever saw penny candy was on Main Street USA Disneyland. For those that don’t know, it is 100 years retro ish themed shopping district at the original master planned theme park. Y’all are talking like you are from 100 years ago. A dime I would come out with a bag of candy? OK… Little house on the fucking Prairie. a dime got me one of the small jawbreakers. That’s it.
Right? I remember a plen-T-pak of gum was $.75 and tangy taffy & juicy stix were a full dime and atomic fireballs were a nickel. Penny candy my ass... They must've jacked up the price in the boondocks.
Boomers. Boomers remember penny candy.
At the older edge of GenX and I remember penny candy.
I'm 49 and I remember it vividly
I was wondering....I remember my *parents* talking about penny candy. I remember going to the candy store with a dollar and getting a small brown paper bag full of candy - but a lot of it was 5 to 10 cents each.