LifeSavers

Clarence Crane, a chocolate confectioner in Cleveland, Ohio, had a problem—the pure chocolate that he used in his shop melted during the hot summer months. He began experimentation on a hard candy that he could sell during warm weather. He saw a druggist using a hand-operated pill-making machine and concluded he could use a similar machine to make candies. In 1912, he had created a small, round mint candy with a hole in the middle. Because they resembled ships’ floating life savers, he named them accordingly. Crane packaged his LifeSavers in cardboard boxes, but the boxes’ glue seeped into the candy and grocers refused to stock them. In 1913, Crane sold the manufacturing rights to Edward Noble, owner of the Mint Products Company of New York. To solve the glue problem, Noble repackaged the mints and wrapped them in tinfoil wrappers and sold them for a nickel. Due to their previous experience, grocers still refused to stock them, so Noble sold them to bars where displays were installed next to the cash registers. The mint candy served as a lifesaver to those who frequented bars but did not want others to know they had been drinking. In 1915, the United Cigar Store chain placed the displays in their many stores, and LifeSavers became successful. They are considered the first impulse food item.
LifeSavers were made by hand until 1919, when machinery was acquired to manufacture them en mass. Noble marketed them to drugstores, grocery stores, and other retail stores, encouraging proprietors to place them by the cash register. For 10 years, the company only made Pep-O-Mint LifeSavers; later, it added fruit-flavored ones without the holes. By 1929, the fruit-flavored ones acquired holes and, five years later, the five flavors were combined to form the Five Flavor LifeSavers Roll. LifeSavers were manufactured in Canada by 1920; by 1969, the company’s plant in Hamilton, Ontario produced a score of different flavors and more than a billion LifeSavers annually. In 1956, LifeSavers Candies acquired Beech-Nut, makers of gum and baby food. LifeSaver Candies in turn was acquired by Kraft Foods, which in 2004 sold LifeSavers to the Wrigley Company.