Sour Patch Kids were the result of paying attention to the industry and the wants and delights of the world at large. And delivering what the people wanted.

Dave Young:

Welcome to the Empire Builders Podcast, teaching business owners the not-so-secret techniques that took famous businesses from mom and pop to major brands. Stephen Semple is a marketing consultant, story collector, and storyteller. I’m Stephen’s sidekick and business partner, Dave Young. Before we get into today’s episode, a word from our sponsor, which is, well, it’s us, but we’re highlighting ads we’ve written and produced for our clients. So, here’s one of those.

[Waulkie Feet Ad]

Dave Young:

Welcome to Empire Builders Podcast. Dave Young here, along with Stephen Semple. All Stephen told me for this episode is that he’s excited about doing it because it’s got a Canadian tie-in, but he didn’t whisper the name of the company or anything into my ear as we counted down.

Stephen Semple:

I forgot to.

Dave Young:

Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

Oh, I forgot to.

Dave Young:

He just stood there looking at me.

Stephen Semple:

I’ll tell you now, Sour Patch Kids. You know the candy?

Dave Young:

Sour Patch Kids. Oh, gosh. Are they the origin of all the little sour candies that are out now?

Stephen Semple:

It’s always hard to say if they’re the exact origin, but they were certainly one of the first ones that went big, for sure.

Dave Young:

And the candy was after most of my candy-eating days. So let’s dive in.

Stephen Semple:

So you’re trying to tell me you eat no candy now? None?

Dave Young:

Well, that’s what the doctor says should be happening. But as a child, I’m just too old to devour a lot of Sour Patch Kids, I think. Tell me when this started.

Stephen Semple:

So the Sour Patch Kids started basically in the early 1970s, is kind of when they came out. It was a Canadian company, but the other thing is it didn’t, first of all, start as Sour Patch Kids. It was actually first called Mars Men. And in 1985, they renamed it Sour Patch.

Dave Young:

Okay. I was adulting by then. Where did this start? Wait, Mars Men?

Stephen Semple:

Mars Men.

Dave Young:

Yeah, that’s not a good name.

Stephen Semple:

No. So today, it’s part of a big conglomerate, it’s part of the Mondelēz Group, and it’s estimated that there’s about $248 million worth of Sour Patch Kids sold every year. So that’s a lot of little kids. And it was started by a little Canadian company. There was a guy by the name of Frank Galatolie who was working at Jaret International, and he was admiring the American candy revolution, and he was the sales and marketing manager for Jaret.

And what Jaret did was they were an importer of food that foreign transplants would like. So they would go out and they would find some sort of food that people from India would like and bring it in or from Poland and they would bring it in. So basically, they really specialized in this whole idea of finding foods that foreign transplants would like.

Dave Young:

Interesting. I like that idea.

Stephen Semple:

And he wanted to do a twist on gummy candy. So in 1920, Hans Riegel, in Germany, made the first gummy, and that was like a gummy bear. And they were really popular in Europe, but they weren’t super popular here. And he didn’t want to do a traditional sweet candy, and Halloween was really growing candy, and candy could now be found in different places, and all of this other stuff going on.

And he also started to notice that there was an emergence of a different type of candy, like the Atomic Fireball came out and sour Lemonheads came out. So he was noticing that there was this desire for stuff that was not just sweet, and they were really the first to do this whole idea of sour and sweet. So they combined two acids, so it would be super sour and that super sour would drop off and then would come back as being sweet.

Dave Young:

Okay. The sour, yeah.

Stephen Semple:

They made it really super sour was the whole idea.

Dave Young:

The back of my jaws are tensing up as we talk about this.

Stephen Semple:

Right, yeah. So they create that candy and they launch it as Mars Men.

Dave Young:

Okay. Now, is it just vitamin C? Is it just ascorbic acid or what is the… Okay.

Stephen Semple:

I never looked into what it is. If I remember correct, and I think it’s a couple of acids, one of the acids is citric acid, and I think there’s another acid.

Dave Young:

That’s the one I’m thinking of, ascorbic, might be aspirin or something, but yeah, citric acid, just vitamin C.

Stephen Semple:

But there was also a second tartaric acid or something like that because it was a combination of two acids, one being citric acid, and I can’t remember-

Dave Young:

It’s candy technology. We wouldn’t understand anyway.

Stephen Semple:

There it is. So they launched it as Mars Men and it had a little bit of success. But in 1985, they noticed a fad, and there’s a fad called Cabbage Patch Kids.

Dave Young:

Oh gosh, yeah.

Stephen Semple:

And then that was followed… Remember, then there was the cards that were made, the Garbage Pail Kids.

Dave Young:

Yeah. So we’re following this trend.

Stephen Semple:

Remember the Garbage Pail Kids? So he’s noticing this trend and decides, “You know what? Let’s call it Sour Patch Kids.” And it’s a hit right away.

Dave Young:

Sure.

Stephen Semple:

They changed the name, they changed the packaging. It was the most popular candy of 1985.

Dave Young:

Did the Cabbage Patch people sue them for infringing on Patch and Kids?

Stephen Semple:

I didn’t see any history on that. And if you think about it is-

Dave Young:

It’s a great example of just riding the coattails of a popular trend. Absolutely.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah. Look, and it’s still popular. It’s a top 10 candy today. Still really super popular. But what I like is, again, they were looking out there, they saw gummies. Gummies weren’t super popular here. They noticed this whole idea of hot and sour candies coming along with the Atomic Fireball and sour Lemonheads, but decided to do something different, that combining of making it super sour, dropping back, and coming back sweet, doing all of those things and creating kind of this new candy, and then recognizing this trend that they could tap into that actually really kicked off its success.

Dave Young:

Very cool.

Stephen Semple:

Because again, it’s that whole idea that sometimes if something is working and working a little bit, sometimes a repackage, a renaming, as said you said, ride the coattails of this other trend can completely turn things around. It went to Allen Candies for a little while, and then, as I said, it’s now part of the Mondelēz big corporate group.

Dave Young:

And do they make all kinds of other genre of sugary, sour gummy candies, or is it just a highly competitive field now?

Stephen Semple:

I think it’s just a highly competitive field. And when they went to do the manufacturing, they actually did a deal where they formed a company called Allen Candy, which was Cadbury and Jaret together, and they did that in Hamilton, and then, as I said, in ’85 rebranded it Sour Patch Kids. And I think it was in the late 90s that Mondelēz came along and bought them out.

Dave Young:

Okay. I have an embarrassing story about, it wasn’t actually Sour Patch Kids, but it was those gummy worms that were sour with the coating.

Stephen Semple:

Oh, yeah.

Dave Young:

Do you remember those? They’re still around too. Stay tuned. We’re going to wrap up this story and tell you how to apply this lesson to your business right after this.

[Empire Builders Ad]

Dave Young:

Let’s pick up our story where we left off. And trust me, you haven’t missed a thing. Okay. I have an embarrassing story about, it wasn’t actually Sour Patch Kids, but it was those gummy worms that were sour with the coating.

Stephen Semple:

Oh, yeah.

Dave Young:

Remember those? They’re still around too.

Stephen Semple:

I forget who made those.

Dave Young:

So do you want to hear this dumb-

Stephen Semple:

Yeah, let’s hear the story.

Dave Young:

I’m a single guy in my 20s in Western Nebraska running a radio station in a little tiny town. And my town didn’t have anything going on on the 4th of July, which is the big American summer holiday. So I decide that we’re going to have a parade and we’re just going to have it in the little city park where the radio station is and I’m going to be the grand marshal of this parade since it was my idea because, dude, I’m a smart-ass 20-something guy. Everybody throws candy at parades and little kids come out and grab it.

So I just said, “Look, if you want to be in the parade, be in the parade. Come to the parking lot where we’re going to start, and we’re just going to drive around the park one time or walk. We’re going to walk around.” So I take this leather mail bag that I have that I usually go to the post office to pick up the mail in. I filled it with whatever kind we had at hand, and there was a big bag of gummy worms laying around, the ones that are just in a bag with no wrapper. And then I had some unpopped popcorn and I had a big bag of golf tees. Not candy, golf tees. I put it all in this bag and mixed it up.

And I’m walking through this parade throwing out fistfuls of golf tees, unpopped popcorn, and gummy candy into the dirt. They’re not wrapped. And it was highly entertaining for me because kids would pick up a golf tee and they’d just look at it and they didn’t know what it was. And one kid picked up some kernels of popcorn and looked up at their mom like, “It’s corn.” And then other kids are picking up the worms and their moms are batting them out of their hands as fast as they can pick them up because they’re covered in dirt.

Stephen Semple:

Right. Well, because dirt really would stick to that gummy.

Dave Young:

Like a champ. This is not coming off until you get it in your mouth. So I’m somewhat embarrassed, but I’m also kind of proud of this. So one of the women with small children in the crowd, these two little girls, at that point, ages four and one and a half, and it’s her first day in this town. She had just arrived that day and came to this parade with these two little girls and-

Stephen Semple:

Welcome to town.

Dave Young:

… welcome to town. Fortunately, for me, she didn’t remember that I was the one that did it because when I actually met her six months later, we ended up getting married and I ended up adopting those two little girls that I was throwing candy to in my own parade.

Stephen Semple:

Oh, is that right?

Dave Young:

Yeah. So that was Julie and our two oldest daughters.

Stephen Semple:

I didn’t realize your two daughters-

Dave Young:

The older two. Yeah.

Stephen Semple:

… were adopted. I had no idea.

Dave Young:

Then we had two more.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah, I had no idea.

Dave Young:

The younger two saw when we adopted the older two, or when I did, they were like, “Well, why won’t you adopt me?” And I’m like, “Because I don’t have to.” “Yeah, but why won’t you?” So that’s still an ongoing argument. But yeah, that’s my gummy story. I became a hated person, but then it all-

Stephen Semple:

It worked out in the end.

Dave Young:

… worked out in the end.

Stephen Semple:

Well, while you’re doing that, I just quickly looked up, the invention of the gummy worm is attributed to a German company called Trolli, but the sour worms are Hammond’s.

Dave Young:

Okay. Well, that’s good to know. At any point, the tradition of golf tees, popcorn, and gummy worms never caught on. I think I’m the only one to ever do that.

Stephen Semple:

So if anybody ever sees a parade where somebody is throwing gummy worms, unpopped popcorn, and golf tees out, please let us know-

Dave Young:

Exactly, yeah.

Stephen Semple:

… so that Dave can collect his royalties. And also let Dave know that he has an unknown doppelgänger-

Dave Young:

Yeah, somewhere.

Stephen Semple:

… out there somewhere in the world.

Dave Young:

All right, thanks for listening to my TED Talk. I may just go dissolve a vitamin C in my mouth just to get that visceral sour feeling that this episode has created in me, Stephen.

Stephen Semple:

And it is interesting how these weird things come together and we’ve now heard the origin story. And what town was that in again? Where in Nebraska was that?

Dave Young:

I’m not allowed to say from the witness protection program. It was a little town called Sidney, Nebraska.

Stephen Semple:

Sidney. Can we even find it on a map?

Dave Young:

Oh, it’s on the map. You know what put it on the map? It’s actually a company that would probably be worth talking about in Empire Builders one day, and that’s Cabela’s.

Stephen Semple:

And we’ve talked about doing Cabela’s, so we absolutely need to.

Dave Young:

It was the hometown of Cabela’s. They’re still around as a brand, but they’re part of Bass Pro Shop now.

Stephen Semple:

Yeah, Cabela’s is really fascinating. And I’m sure there’s lots of things you have to share on it given that history. So let’s absolutely do Cabela’s.

Dave Young:

Okay, another time.

Stephen Semple:

All right.

Dave Young:

Thank you, Stephen.

Stephen Semple:

Thanks, David.

Dave Young:

Thanks for listening to the podcast. Please share us, subscribe on your favorite podcast app, and leave us a big fat juicy five-star rating and review at Apple Podcasts. And if you’d like to schedule your own 90-minute Empire Building session, you can do it at empirebuildingprogram.com.