No other candy has served the American imagination more than Pop Rocks. Okay, maybe the stories surrounding M&Ms could compete with the ones spawned from Pop Rocks, but you have to admit, dying from ingesting candy and Coke is pretty remarkable.

What’s just as remarkable is the real life history of Pop Rocks, told in a book by Marv Rudolph called Pop Rocks: The Inside Story of America’s Revolutionary Candy. The Boston Globe did a short Q & A with the author, and here’s what he had to say about the famously fizzy candy:

Q You write that when food chemist Bill Mitchell invented Pop Rocks, he wasn’t trying to make a candy.

A He was trying to carbonate Kool-Aid. He first made a carbonated ice. They actually made a product out of it. Imagine a hockey puck that was made of carbonated ice, and they would coat it in chocolate. A customer would drop it in a glass of milk, and it would bubble and they’d have an instant ice cream soda.

[...]

Q How long before the exploding kid rumors started?

A It must have started within six months. Their consumer hot line was going 24/7. People would go, “Are you the company that killed that nice little boy?” And right around that time, there was a rumor about spider eggs in Bubble Yum.

[read more]

What I found most interesting was the fact that creator Bill Mitchell is also credited with inventing Jell-O and Cool Whip. Truly a culinary genius!

• Pop Rocks Official Page
• Boston.com: Rock that Candy Shop
• Pop Rocks: The Inside Story of America’s Revolutionary Candy
• Snopes: The death of little Mikey

Buy Pop Rocks online:

• at Candy Crate
• at Oldtime Candy
• at Amazon

candy, sweets, Pop Rocks, PopRocks, urban legends, retro, nostalgia, book, books, trivia