Movie-theater candy culture once included shareable sweets like Raisinets, M&M's, Milk Duds, Sno-Caps, and Flicks, enjoyed alongside popcorn at drive-ins and premieres. Flicks consisted of small silky chocolates stacked in a Mentos-like tin foil tube that allowed one-handed popping with a thumb flick, creating a distinctive vessel-based appeal. Flicks originated in the early 1900s at Ghirardelli Square and remained a West Coast favorite until production stopped in the 1980s because packaging costs became prohibitive. Jim Tjerrild later purchased the Flicks trademark and the original production machine to revive the candy.
Raisinets, M&M's, and Milk Duds still seem to be going strong, but younger generations haven't even heard of some all-time chocolatey favorites like Sno-Caps and, drum roll, Flicks. The small morsels of silky chocolate were stacked in a Mentos-like tube for easy mouth popping in dark theaters. The mouth-melting chocolate was delicious, sure, but the appeal lay more in the vessel. With a light flick of the thumb, the chocolates popped right out of the tin foil tube, sort of like Pez without the cute dispenser.
Flicks first entered the candy scene in the early 1900s and was made in San Francisco's Ghirardelli Square by the eponymous legendary chocolatier. They were a West Coast favorite for decades, but in the '80s, the candy maker halted production. Not for lack of dedicated buyers, but the packaging was simply too expensive. The fact that Flicks were a one-handed treat was half the appeal, so Ghirardelli ditched the brand, and no one saw them for decades.
Jim Tjerrild, the current CEO of Flicks Candy Co., has been right in the center of the candy business for decades, and without him, Flicks would have probably stayed in the past. Before heading Flicks Candy Co., Tjerrild ran a manufacturing company specializing in chocolate equipment. In the early 2000s, he was fixing up a dated machine at Ghirardelli when he spotted the same hefty contraption that once produced his favorite chocolate candy: Flicks.
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