Skip to main content

What's the deal with Lifesavers?

Up until 2003, Lifesavers Candy was made here in Holland.  It closed down as the company moved production to Canada:
https://www.deseret.com/2002/4/11/19648526/life-savers-plant-is-dying

As of 2013, Haworth took over the property to use as a factory outlet store, which is reflected in Google's current results as of this writing:
https://www.hollandsentinel.com/article/20131210/NEWS/131219986

But, I'd like to explore their unique shape...and specifically, the reasoning behind the unique shape.  Per Wikipedia, and an Australian novelty newspaper, the shape was a marketing tool:  The inventor, Clarence Crane, wanted a hard candy that could hold up to summer heat, and would be shaped in such a way as to set it apart from competitors.  Crane saw a machine that made round-shaped pills for use in pharmaceuticals, and another that would add a hole into the center...effectively making the "lifesaver" shape of a water rescue ring that we've all see on boats, piers, and in public pools.

So, we know for sure that the candy was designed to have a unique shape, and that this unique shape was achieved using machinery that was originally used to make medicine.

Looking at two common "urban legends" around West Michigan, we see half truths reflected, but not the full story.

The story I heard was from my fourth grade teacher.  His claim to truth was that he grew up on a farm that was across the field from the Lifesavers Plant on the south side of Holland - that detail isn't important, but was what he used to establish authority on the topic.  His story was that there was a young boy whose little sister almost died choking on a peppermint candy.  Given Holland and its Dutch background, it's a reasonable extrapolation to say that this might be a Wilhelmina Peppermint:  Giant peppermints with an embossed image of Queen Wilhelmina of The Netherlands on them; about the diameter of a quarter, and about 4 times as thick.  Anyway, the young boy was quite traumatized, seeing his sister nearly die of choking, so he "designed" a peppermint that was the same size and shape, but had a hole in the middle to let his sister breathe if another one got stuck in her throat again.  Because she nearly died, the candy was named "life saver," because it prevented death.

The story that my wife heard (again, from her fourth grade teacher) was another story of a young boy and his little sister.  The sister was deathly ill with some sort of old-timey disease, and couldn't swallow the pills that the doctor had given her to heal her.  The young boy looked at these and said "If only there were some way to make these more swallowable.  I know, we'll add a hole in it and smooth out the sides!"  In this story, the "life saver" moniker comes from the fact that it was a life saving medicine for the young boy's little sister.

I find it quite interesting that the two urban legends from West Michigan circle around a young boy and his little sister, and that the "life saver" name comes from saving the sister's life...when the official story was that the inventor just wanted a unique shape to sell his candy and make it memorable.  The second urban legend weaves back into the official story by acknowledging that there was some sort of medicine involved.

I'll close by asking:
What urban legends did you hear about Lifesavers candy and why they're shaped the way they are?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Eddie Bentz Bank Robbery

Prohibition is one of the most storied periods in American history. Urban myths and legends abound nationwide, with tales of folk heroes like Al Capone, Babyface Nelson, and John Dillinger. Tall tales are woven around organized crime, wild bootleggers, underground saloons, and well-dressed gangsters. There's something uniquely American about the DIY ethos of taking matters into your own hands, making illegal alcohol, and selling it through clandestine channels; stickin' it to the man like those in the illegal alcohol industry did. These stories are immortalized in movies like The Road To Perdition and Public Enemies, as well as TV series like HBO's Boardwalk Empire and, well, PBS's Prohibition. Many lakeshore towns in Western Michigan have tales of organized crime and bootlegging. Easy access to Lake Michigan meant that bootleggers had easy access to boat routes, safely out of reach of authorities. Booze was funneled in from Canada, then taken by boat to cities all aro...

XFinity Sucks. Or, Why I'm Excited For Holland BPW Fiber To Come Through Our Neighborhood

 The whole thing started in October - we hit the data cap for our XFinity plan in 2 or 3 days. I didn't know we had a data cap on our XFinity plan, so I was befuddled. Problem is, you can't just call XFinity, you must escalate your ticket up their chain of command: Start with their AI chatbot, escalate to a human typing on the other end of the chatroom, get transferred to an AI phone operator, escalate that to any number of human phone operators. Somewhere in that initial escalation, they discovered that we weren't on an actual plan from them, and the services we had weren't even offered by them anymore - our account had slipped through the cracks. Their "solution" to the massive data leak was to give sell us the premium tier service with no data cap...which didn't actually solve anything, it just passed the buck down the road. By October 6 or 7, we had blown through another terrabyte of data, so I reached out to Customer Service agai...

The Melon Heads of Felt Mansion

The Melonheads of Saugatuck Dunes are a truly unique bit of local lore and urban legend. While most urban legends have a grain of truth in them, my research into the Melonheads has turned up many dead-ends and false leads. Here's what we know for sure: Felt Mansion was built by Dorr E. Felt, a wealthy businessman from Chicago, situated on Shore Acres Farm (present location of Saugatuck Dunes State Park). Within a few days of being completed in 1928, Agnes Felt passed away. Within a year and a half, Dorr Felt himself passed away, in 1930. This is all freely available information from Allegan County. In 1949, the estate was sold by the family to the Archdiocese of Chicago and was used as a seminary, called Saint Augustine Seminary. By 1962, cloistered nuns moved in, and a boarding school was established. This is all verifiable by Archdiocese of Chicago records, and by yearbooks, available at Herrick District Library in Holland. The Seminary was closed and the property was sold t...