Popeye Candy Sticks

World Candies

I’ve mentioned on this site before about my love of classic candies. There are so many things that classic candies have going for them that make them so great. It could be that they’ve been making them for so long that they’ve had a long time to perfect the recipe. It could be that they’ve been such a big part of my life for so long that there’s a great deal of nostalgia. There are just so many reasons a classic candy can be around forever. However, when they say that a classic never dies, they sure aren't talking about Popeye Candy Sticks.

It seems as though political correctness has again damaged a part of our past and stomped on my nostalgia. When I was a little kid, these were known as Popeye Cigarettes. When my parents were growing up, these were known as Popeye Cigarettes. Sure, both my parents smoked for a few years, but I didn’t. So, I think it’s wrong to assume that kids will pick up the habit, just because they ate a candy with the word “cigarette” in it. It’s also not like they actually changed the candy either. They still have the little red tips on most of them (this hasn’t changed, even when I was a kid the red tips were not perfect. I’m not a scientist or psychologist, but I don’t think that every kid that ate these Popeye Cigarettes would have started smoking, I get the feeling that there would have been other influencers in their lives.

As a candy, these aren’t really that great, and they never really have been. So as for them having had time to improve their candy, well that’s just not a factor. What they’ve done by changing the name is eliminate the one thing this classic candy has, and that’s nostalgia. While some people call them Popeye Candy Sticks, they will always be Popeye Cigarettes to me.