Stick candy

Stick candy

A variety of flavored stick candy in a store display
Alternative names	Candy stick, barber pole candy, barber pole
Type	Hard candy
Place of origin	United States
Main ingredients	Sugar, sometimes corn syrup, water, cream of tartar

Stick candy (also called candy stick, barber pole candy, or barber pole) is a long, cylindrical variety of hard candy, usually four to seven inches in length and 1/4 to 1/2 inch in diameter, but in some extraordinary cases up to 14 inches in length and two inches in diameter. Like candy canes, they usually have at least two different colors (either opaque or translucent) swirled together in a spiral pattern, resembling a barber's pole.

The candy has a long history in the United States, where it is believed to have been developed, and is often marketed as an "old fashioned" candy. It is often sold in general stores and similar shops specializing in nostalgia items. The Cracker Barrel chain estimates that its stores sell a total length of 940 miles (1,510 km) of stick candy each year.

Stick candy has been around since at least the fall of 1837, when it was shown at the Exhibition of the Massachusetts Charitable Mechanic Association alongside "lobster candy". Stick candy was popular with both children and adults in the U.S. as early as the 1860s, and the selling of this type of candy (particularly during the carnival season in the warmer months) was described as being lucrative. One contemporary account describes broken pieces of stick candy being sold in paper containers, being presented by candy sellers to rural people as something special, and commanding a high price.

Candy sticks were the subject of an 1885 song called the "The Candy Stick":

Oh the candy stick striped like a gay barber’s pole,
Was a luscious delight of my infantile soul,
Ev’ry penny I earn’d in my little palm burn’d,
Till away to the store on the corner I stole,
For the candy stick striped like a gay barber’s pole.

Stick candy was the subject of a poem, "Stick-Candy Days", from the 1907 collection A Rose of the Old Regime: And other Poems of Home-Love and Childhood by the Bentztown Bard (Folger McKinsey). The first two verses are:

I want to go back to the stick-candy days,
Before they made bonbons of choc'late and glaze;
I want to go back to the dear little shop
Where the little old lady sold ginger-beer pop,
And made little cookies with raisins, that went
Like lightning because they were two for a cent!

I know the green street where the little shop stood,
And, oh, the stick-candy that tasted so good!
Lemon and wintergreen, cinnamon bar,
Each in its round little, fat little jar—
I see through the glamor of childhood the glint
Of the sassafras, horehound and white peppermint!