The title says it all. I had no idea that I was ready for a Chuckle until I saw some in a display near the cash register of a local hardware store. I remembered that friendly little pack of multi-colored jelly candies and immediately broke into a nostalgia swoon. How is it that the best (or at least the most interesting) varieties of candy only come from hardware stores?

My father had a major sweet tooth, and always had a jumble of candies and other sweet treats available for a quick snack. One of his regulars was Chuckles. But don’t ask me when was the last time I saw them for sale – frankly, I had forgotten that they ever existed. Until I was reminded.

And I have another question – why were so many new and durable candy items invented in the 1920’s? I suppose that the 20’s was the mass market in the U.S. hitting its stride. And when an industrial society hits its stride it needs a good Chuckle. Sorry, those puns will probably absolutely keep coming.

Fred W. Amend was born in Cleveland, Ohio in 1891. He seems to have started early in the candy business, first for the Heide Candy Company of New York. By 1921 he had moved to Illinois and formed the Fred W. Amend Co. as a marshmallow-making venture. Later that year he began producing a jelly candy after solving the problem that had plagued that kind of confection – a tendency to sweat and turn sticky in the packaging. Amend’s solution was to coat each piece in coarse crystals of sugar. It was Fred’s wife, Tulita, who gave the product a name – Chuckles.

Chuckles seems to have been sold through Woolworth’s stores early in the candy’s run before becoming a widespread brand name. The candy got plenty of publicity from the 1940’s on.

Amend’s company appears to have begun in Chicago but it is clear that by about 1930 the operation had relocated in Danville, Illinois, where production remained for decades. It was not until 1970 that the company (with Fred Amend nearing the age of 80) was sold, beginning a confusing maze of ownership and licensing rights.

It looked something like this: In 1970 the Fred W. Amend Company was sold to Nabisco. In 1986, Nabisco sold the company and manufacturing operations to local investors and former employees (which became Tempo Confections), while simultaneously selling the Chuckles brand name and licensing rights to the Finnish company Leaf, Inc. Hershey inherited Chuckles when it acquired Leaf in 1996. It was 2002 when Leaf sub-licensed the brand to Farley & Sathers Candy Company, which merged into the Ferrara Candy Company in 2012.

It was during the Nabisco era that Chuckles latched onto a tie-in with Evil Knievel. Is it just me, or does that seem like one of the great mis-matches in promotional tie-ups? On the few times I have imagined what Mr. Knievel might have consumed when he was not careening across gaping spans on his screaming motorcycle, Chuckles would not have been one of them. Oh well.

Surely everyone reading here has tried Chuckles. What? Not everyone? Let me help you with this. Each package consists of five little sugar-coated jelly biscuits. Each of the five pieces is a different flavor, and always in the same order. From left to right: cherry, lemon, licorice, orange, lime.

When I was a tot, one grandmother always had a candy jar, and most of the time it was filled with “orange slices”. These had no relation with Chuckles, other than being a similar product. And an even deeper rabbit hole. Let’s say that their parentage is disputed but it was Brach’s that made them popular. Anyway, Orange Slices were just like orange Chuckles, only each piece was shaped like a segment of a peeled orange, and coated with a similar sugar coating that gave them a bit of a crunch when you bite them. Anyway, I loved Orange Slices (and still do). And perhaps this is my biggest impediment to enjoying Chuckles.

For my first Chuckle in decades, I opened the package and started with the lime end. I started there because lime is one of my least favorite flavors. Unless we are talking a gin & tonic, when lime becomes a delight. It was not unpleasant, and for someone who loves lime, well, there is lime to love. The problem with starting with lime is that the next Chuckle on tap is that orange – my very favorite, for the reason disclosed above. A package of nothing but orange Chuckles would be a good hearty laugh. But they do not come that way – which may be why Orange Slices exist.

Then – licorice. There are two kinds of people in the world. There are those who love the taste of licorice candy. I am of the second group, who does not understand why I have to share a world with people of the first group. Really, couldn’t you licorice fans go off and live somewhere by yourselves with your black-stained teeth? Or maybe not – we are divided by enough things these days without getting that way over candy. But it was in the interest of journalistic integrity (or was it just dark humor) that I ate the black Chuckle instead of mailing it to my little sister. My father was one of those licorice-loving people, which allowed him to be a Chuckle 100 percenter instead of the 80 percenter that I am. Or maybe 60 percenter, depending on how I am feeling about the lime on a given day.

It was the lemon Chuckle that cleansed the licorice from my palate, and did so pretty effectively. Which makes me wonder how it would be on its own instead of as a sort of candy rescue mission. But I was back to my old self by the time I finished off with the cherry Chuckle, probably my second-favorite flavor of the five.

So there! I have had my nostalgic Chuckles and am in a pretty good mood about the whole thing. I will confess, however, that the candy’s draw for me is more about the nostalgia than about actually consuming them because of the massive shift of gears that takes place with each different flavor. For me, a package of Chuckles is a mixture of sublime highs (orange), crashing lows (licorice) and the climbs and descents between them. Which is just more work than is ideal from a package of candy.

I feel kind of bad about this conclusion. You see, when I see that cheerful package (and the delightful name), I really want to like Chuckles. Sadly, Chuckles is just one more in a long list of things where the expectation is better than the actual experience. Or better than 60% of the experience, anyway. Sorry, but percentages are so easy when we are dealing with 5 items that I just cannot resist. Chuckles are like so many record albums from the days of yore, where one side had two really great songs, a couple that were OK and one that you just couldn’t stand.

But if nothing else, I got a couple of good Chuckles out of the package. Sorry, I’ll stop now.