Beech Tree News Network

Friday morning, as I reached for my daily reading on the lower shelf of my bookcase, I said out loud, “I need a column.”  As if on cue, a half-empty box of Whitman’s assorted chocolates fell from the upper shelf and hit me on the head.  I laughed then decided to write about the chocolates and the role they have played in my life since childhood.

               “Life is like a box of chocolates,” said Forrest Gump, “you never know what you’re going to get.”  That was true when I was growing up.  Today, however, there is a guide, showing you exactly what every chocolate is and its location within the box.

               In my youth, biting into an assorted chocolate was like tasting Bertie Botts every flavor beans, of Harry Potter fame.  You truly didn’t know what you were going to get.  If you got a chocolate you didn’t particularly like, it was too bad, you ate it anyway, because, well, it was chocolate, and chocolate didn’t grow on trees—not in Kentucky, anyway.  When I bit into a maple cream—my favorite—I memorized the shape and location of the chocolate, so I could see where it repeated in the box.  There was and still is a pattern to the candies.

               For Christmas, my stepmom often gave my two younger sisters and me money to buy a large box of assorted chocolates as a gift for her and my dad.  She was smart like that.  She knew those wouldn’t cost a lot of money, and it would be a gift that was kid-approved.  More importantly, she always shared.  Those Christmas chocolates gave me the love of assorted chocolates I have to this day.

               Whitman’s are my favorite, and yeah, I know they aren’t as fancy as Russell Stover or Lindor, but they still offer orange cream and maple cream—two varieties that don’t often show up in the other varieties—and I think the chocolate tastes better.  Garey and his mom like chocolate nut clusters and don’t really care for cream-filled chocolates, but my stepmom is like me, she still enjoys the assorted variety.

               According to Wikipedia.org, Whitman’s originated in Philadelphia in 1842.  Stephan Whitman, the founder, was just 19 at the time.  In 1854, Whitman’s produced pre-packaged candy—the first of its kind—and 1912 marked the introduction of the Whitman Sampler—my personal favorite.  In 1915, the messenger boy became the symbol of quality on the box, and the messenger boy even appeared in wartime newspaper ads in 1918, during WWI, announcing, “In peace times a pleasant luxury, In war times a fighting food.”

               In 1946, Whitman’s assisted General Electric in the development of a refrigerated display case, so the candy could be sold during summer months—the stores had no air conditioning.  Pet, Inc., of evaporated milk fame, bought Whitman’s in the 1960s, then sold it to Russell Stover candies in 1963.  In 2014, Russell Stover was acquired by Lindt and Sprungli, the company that makes Lindor chocolates (Wikipedia.org).

               Yes, I know what this means.  Whitman’s, Russell Stover and Lindor are all made by the same company.  You will never convince the group of chocolate-detecting taste buds in my mouth that this is true, however.  In my book, Whitman’s are still head and shoulders above the rest, and all this talk about chocolate is intensifying my craving for a maple cream, so I’m going to take a break and finish off that box of Whitman’s that fell on my head before I began this column.